


freedom to choose our own chains

by astrosaur



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (literally he has a journal but that's also his profession here), Canon Divergence, Canon Temporary Memory Loss, Journalist Mike Hanlon, M/M, Sonia Kaspbrak is her own warning, they meet again in their late 20s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:08:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25636312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrosaur/pseuds/astrosaur
Summary: Mike makes his way out of Derry with a couple of items on his to-do list, which includes finding Eddie Kaspbrak. Once he arrives in New York, he's got Eddie's information--but he's missing the memory of who Eddie is, and why he's looking for him in the first place.
Relationships: Mike Hanlon/Eddie Kaspbrak
Comments: 26
Kudos: 33





	1. Prologue: days counted in the seeds we plant

> 8/31/93
> 
> Today was Ben’s turn to make it out of Derry.
> 
> Ben got us gifts even though Eddie told him that this was not within his jurisdiction as a Derry escapee. That’s not how going away parties work, Eddie had protested.
> 
> Ben pointed out that he was the recipient of Richie’s Game Boy and Beverly’s records when those two took off for greener pastures. He added that even if most people did things differently, the passing down of odd belongings and trinkets had become a sort of tradition. Eddie pouted (something he’d ever admit to) and shoved his new salt lamp into his backpack with no further objection.
> 
> Stan and I didn’t make a fuss. Stan became the proud owner of a small homemade bookcase that Ben made during shop class. I got this brand-new journal that could be mistaken for an ancient tome.
> 
> It’s nice enough. (Kind of bizarre to be writing about the thing I’m writing on.) The hardbound cover is sturdy, and the sheets are so thick you could weaponize them. Ben assured me that cover isn’t made of real leather. He wouldn’t have been able to afford that even if he wanted to. Still, I’m sure he cut into his savings for this. I’ll treasure it and use it every day.
> 
> Although, if I’m honest, it’s a bit of a shitty consolation prize. Another one of the few friends I’ve ever had is going away, and all I get is this compilation of blank pages. I told Ben as much, though I shouldn’t have. He gave me this really injured look in return.
> 
> “I’ll stay in touch,” he promised. “I have your numbers, and you have my aunt’s number, too.”
> 
> “I know. I’m kidding,” I said, although I wasn’t.
> 
> Ben meant it. And I have no doubt that Bev meant it too, as did Bill and Richie.
> 
> Ben, up to now, holds on to the belief that those guys lost our information. Frankly, I don’t get why. It got harder to believe that after it happened not once, not twice, but three times.
> 
> Stan and Eddie agree on a more obvious solution—that Bill, Bev, and Richie had gotten too busy. Occam’s razor. Eddie believes there’s much more to do in the worlds outside of Derry. Stan figures they’ve made new friends, and we’ve been conditioned from the get-go to maintain the slimmest of social circles.
> 
> I don’t know which of their theories make the most sense.
> 
> Actually, that’s not strictly true. I do have opinions on which ones sound more realistic. But “realistic” isn’t the same as “likely”. More to the point, neither of those are the same as “real”.
> 
> I haven’t offered up my own take on it. Whenever I attempt to put it into words, it sounds farfetched.
> 
> This is how it looks written out: something happened to our friends and it’s related to what happened four summers ago. Specifically, the parts of that summer that we’re all mixed up about.
> 
> This is the theory I feel strongest about. The truth behind Bill, Bev, and Richie’s seeming desertion is rooted in our inability to agree on the details around George Denbrough’s disappearance, or the reason Eddie broke his arm that year.
> 
> Like I said, it’s not the most pragmatic line of thinking. You keep that sort of thing to yourself unless you want to get locked up right next to Henry Bowers. I’m sure he’d love to have me as his neighbor.

> 12/20/96
> 
> I thought I’d be used to this by now. As it turns out, it doesn’t get easier. Perhaps it’s even worse now that it’s Eddie.
> 
> It’s not to say I didn’t love the others just as much. I did—I do. But he’s the last one. Our friendship is the longest I’ve ever had.
> 
> We watched each other grow up in a way we didn’t get to with the others. We safeguard truths about each other that no one other living soul has access to.
> 
> It’s… a lot to lose.
> 
> Tonight, Eddie and I snuck into the campus library. We reminisced like a couple of 90-year-olds. We talked about the girl that chased Stan around to his utter bewilderment. The comics Ben drew and Richie wrote about a seven-person supergroup. The time Beverly trounced the entire student body at archery.
> 
> It devolved, as it usually did, into how much we missed them. At that moment, it was hard to think about missing each other. We had our arms around each other when a security guard caught us between shelves.
> 
> Eddie immediately panicked. “Shit. Shit, I fucked it up for you.”
> 
> That confused me at first. “No college dean is going to bat an eye at a bunch of students staying in a library past open hours,” I said. “Let alone one for a community college.”
> 
> “Don’t make fun of our school.” Eddie defended the place as if by reflex, even though he’s technically no longer a student there. “That’s not what I meant. I meant, what people say about me.” His eyes were wide with remorse.
> 
> I finally understood. “You think the library assistant is running to the National Enquirer as we speak?”
> 
> It was kind of cute that he was so concerned about my reputation. I reassured him that the people in this school—in this town—have their pick of things to irrationally hate me for. It doesn’t bother me whichever one’s fueling their hostility.
> 
> He couldn’t help but worry, though. And I couldn’t let him go off to New York thinking he’d done me wrong. So I walked him out to the field where there were a bunch of students lounging around. I made a point of meeting his gaze before pecking him on the cheek.
> 
> “What did you do that for?” he asked. His eyes were downright massive at that point.
> 
> Lying to him was impossible. “I wanted to do that before you go.”
> 
> Before I dropped him off to his place, we ran the same spiel that we’ve repeated five times. He said it like he believed it, too, just like the others did. He said he’d answer my calls, he’d write back, and he wouldn’t even joke about not remembering me.
> 
> I thanked him. I still couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge in words that he’d be leaving. Instead of telling him I would miss him, I told him to take care of himself. I’m sure I got something sassy in return, but I can’t remember. Like, who did I think he was, Bill Denbrough?
> 
> On my drive home, I was half-listening to a man on the radio. He was recounting a holiday he spent working as a Macy’s department store elf. I normally ingest this program like it’s a new type of addiction, but I stopped listening when the guy, David Something-or-the-Other, started talking about spending Christmas in New York.
> 
> I didn’t break down until I got home. I waited ‘til I was in my own living room. Started right on cue, a split second before my parents could ask me how I was. They got up and hugged me, holding on tight as if willing themselves to become a cocoon. I felt all of ten years old, clinging to their comfort.
> 
> Dad agreed to give me chores on the farm. Mom relented when he told her that it’d keep me busy. Mostly I wanted to check up on Alice. She and Eddie were each other’s favorites. Alice might be even more heartbroken than I am.
> 
> I tried to think about the silver lining in all this, and I managed to find one. There’s one thing I have to look forward to: this is the last time I’d ever have to watch a friend leave.

Hazel leans on the door of her car, arms crossed as she watches Mike haul his suitcase into her trunk. “I hope you don’t take this as an endorsement. This is not me saying, ‘go forth and lose yourself down more rabbit holes’.”

Mike grins. “Thanks for indulging me all the same.”

She shakes her head, long-suffering as ever. “Promise me you’ll make the most of your trip. By that I mean you won’t spend all eight days investigating your story.”

“You do remember that’s why I’m heading to New York, right?”

“I do, and I expect a fully fleshed-out, thoughtful piece on my desk two weeks from now,” Hazel says. “That being said, eight days is more than enough to track our source and conduct as many interviews as you need. There’s more to life than chronicling every detail on why a bunch of families fled Derry forty years ago.”

“You’re right. There are a lot of other stories that need to be told.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.” Her tone betrays a slight disappointment. “Hanlon, you’re—what, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Jesus.” Hazel enjoys pretending that his age is a personal affront to her. “I admire the work you’re putting into the paper, but… don’t forget _your_ story. There’s so much more of it that you’ve got to write. You get what I’m saying? It’d be a shame if you spent your whole life making records of other people’s.”

Mike thinks of the journals stashed in his luggage. They’re an insurance that he will heed Hazel’s advice. He’d snuck in some photo booth prints for good measure—consecutive frames of seven faces crammed together, unanimous in their happiness.

“I can’t believe I’m telling my boss this, but okay. You have my word that I won’t spend my entire work trip _working_ ,” he assures her.

She clasps his shoulder and nods her approval. “Good. Now get your lazy bum in the car.”


	2. a surrender as honorable as resistance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might be helpful to mention explicitly that this is set in 2003 :)

Mike’s first three hours in New York are spent entirely at JFK Airport, most of it at baggage claim.

By the time he boards an AirTrain out of the terminal, he’s carrying exactly four things: his wallet, his phone, a pocket-sized notepad, and a pseudo-apologetic letter detailing what is and what isn’t eligible for delayed luggage compensation. In place of the bag he checked in, he’s walking away with a promise from Delta Air Lines that they’ll contact him once they get their shit together.

All this to say, the situation is less than ideal.

First order of business, Mike goes store-to-store in search of a charger for his aging Nokia 3310. After a couple of tries, he successfully picks one up, and he rewards himself with a peculiarly skinny dollar pizza. His dad would’ve found their flimsiness hilarious. Nonetheless, they make for a shockingly satisfying meal for only a handful of quarters.

Next, Mike scours the city to buy an extra change of clothes. He searches high and low for price tags that his conscience could abide by, but he’s consistently thwarted. Even used clothing would set him back a day’s wages. It doesn’t matter that the airline is going to reimburse him for it eventually—it’s the _principle_ of the matter.

In the end, he parts with thirty-two dollars in exchange for a single shirt, a pair of knee-length shorts, and three-pack boxers. The transaction is an affront to his sensibilities. He’s just glad he’s doing this trip solo, with no friend or family around to witness him commit such a heinous act.

It’s two hours to midnight by the time he checks in to a motel towards the eastern edge of Brooklyn. He’s exhausted, frustrated, and already hungry again.

He allows himself a brief fantasy about what he could’ve said to the airline ground staff and TSA agents had he been a Caucasian woman instead of a Black man standing over six feet tall.

Eventually, he tires of his own unproductivity. He switches gears to think about what’s in store for him tomorrow, although he’s still unusually groggy. He guesses that his system must not agree with air travel. He also hasn’t been sleeping well in advance of his trip, anticipation nagging at him whenever he closed his eyes.

He opens the notepad tucked into his back pocket and pours through phrases and revisions to the article he’s working on. His notes are littered with references to Veronica McDade and her family, which he quickly connects to the name at the top of the contact list in his phone.

_! Dominic McDade_

He continues to scour his notepad from cover to cover. Ultimately, he finds nothing to connect with the second name on his contact list.

_! Eddie Kaspbrak_

After a night’s rest, Mike’s presence of mind is only partially restored. It’s practically a license for panic. Six hours of sleep usually does wonders for him.

He keeps his hand off the panic button for now. Instead, he rings Hazel for a status report. Her reaction is comfortingly predictable. After she liberally curses out the airline, she offers to loan him some money so he can move up his flight back to Maine. He declines, assuring her that he can hold out a few days.

She jogs his memory on some of the blanks he hasn’t pieced together yet, briefing him on who Dominic McDade is, and why he’s in New York to talk to him. When he asks about Eddie Kaspbrak, she has less to offer. “Eddie Cassock?” she repeats, uncertain.

“Kaspbrak,” Mike corrects.

“No clue. Could be another lead you have?” she suggests. “I can have Harper check the town records for the Kaspbraks. She’s working on two other pieces right now, but the county fair piece won’t take up much of her time.”

“Yeah, I’d appreciate that.”

Later in the day, Mike tries to ring Dominic McDade. A woman answers, and she tersely informs him that there’s nobody in the apartment by the name of Dominic. He persists, explaining that he flew all the way from Maine, where Dominic’s family is from. It falls on deaf ears.

He ventures out to City College, where Dominic graduated from, according to Hazel’s sources. He splits his time across three campuses, speaking to any administrative staff that would give him the time of day. Each person he speaks with is either unable or unwilling to locate the record of an alumnus from thirty years back.

Throughout the day, Mike also tries his luck with Eddie Kaspbrak. He makes repeated attempts to reach the Kaspbrak residence and is invariably sent to voicemail. He doesn’t leave a message, predicting that it’d only get his number blocked. That’s the only reasonable response to a stranger saying “ _you may not know me, but I flew to New York to find you, I just have no idea why_ ”.

His luck finally turns around on his fourth effort. This time, it rings for a while before a woman’s voice acknowledges him.

Mike nearly leaps out of his skin, thrilled to come upon a voice that isn’t prerecorded. “Good evening. I’m looking for Mr. Eddie Kaspbrak.”

“What’s wrong?” the woman demands. “What do you want with my son? Did something happen to him?”

“No, ma’am.” Mike winces. People probably don’t bust out _sirs_ or _ma’ams_ in the city unless someone’s paying an arm and a leg for the privilege of extreme hospitality. “I have a, um. A delicate matter to discuss with him. No cause for alarm, but it’s sensitive all the same.”

“Nothing is too sensitive that can’t be shared with the boy’s mother.”

Mike almost groans—it hadn’t occurred to him that he might be asking to speak to a child. “Oh, it’s-it’s not health-related.”

“Is this about work?”

Alright, so Eddie Kaspbrak is of working age. Good to know Mike isn’t unwittingly stalking a minor. “Yes,” he decides. It’s as good a guess as any.

“You could’ve called him in the office. It’s not appropriate that you have him deal with business affairs at home.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” Mike wants to smack his forehead when _ma’am_ slips out of him again, unbidden. “This was the phone number given to me.”

The ingrained politeness might just work in his favor. As brusque as Mrs. Kaspbrak is, she ends up forking over Eddie’s work number.

Mike dials it, only to be told that Eddie Kaspbrak had already left for the day. But he isn’t put out, since he ends the day with more valuable information than he started with. Now, he’s got a company name and an office address.

Mike locates Eddie’s office building, a few blocks from Herald Square. The building itself is unexpectedly narrow and its lobby area is no bigger than a bathroom stall.

The security guard behind the desk offers little resistance, not even waiting for Mike to explain his meticulously constructed alibi. The guard asks him to sign a visitor sheet, then waves him off to the direction of the elevators. It’s safe to conclude that Eddie isn’t working for the CIA.

Mike alights from the elevator on the eighth floor, which is shared by two unrelated companies. He follows the sign to the engineering consulting firm where Eddie works. A bespectacled woman smiles at him as he pushes past the glass doors leading to their office. “Hi, how can I help you?”

“Hi. I’m.” Mike lifts the plastic bag he’s holding, flashing her its cheery _Have a Nice Day!_ as it emits telltale whiffs of soy sauce. “I’ve got a delivery for Eddie Kaspbrak.”

“Great. Hang on one second, let me call him for you.”

Mike thanks her as he hugs his peace offering to his chest. He wills himself to stay calm as he listens to her end of the conversation.

After a while, she presses the receiver to her shoulder, addressing Mike. “He says he didn’t order anything.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mike feigns ignorance. He shrugs. “Well, it’s paid for. Someone out there wants to make sure he’s fed.”

Her eyes widen with intrigue as she places the phone back up to her ear and resumes her conversation with Eddie. She evidently says what she needs to, and soon, she’s placing the phone back on the handset and telling Mike that Eddie is on his way.

She leans in, dropping to a whisper. “I didn’t even know Eddie was dating anyone.”

“Oh, it came as a shock to me, too.”

Fortunately, his cheeky comment doesn’t put her off. “Did the order come with a note? Did his secret admirer pay by credit card? Is there a name on the receipt?”

Before Mike can dash her hopes of gathering intel on her coworker, a man rounds the corner. Footsteps go from clomping to wary. He meets Mike’s gaze and inhales sharply. “Hi. I think there’s been a mix-up. I didn’t order anything.”

Mike is caught off-guard by the jolt of emotion that the man invokes with nothing more than his appearance. Granted, it’s a perfectly pleasant face, but still. Mike can’t place what the invading feeling is—or perhaps he’s too ashamed to, because it feels an awful lot like affection. Like a long-lost warmth or a wistful sense of belonging.

It takes a moment or two for Mike to snap out of it. “Someone placed this order for Eddie Kaspbrak.” He finds no desire to put up a pretense. “I—It was me. I placed the order.”

“What?”

Mike catches the miniscule squeak coming from the direction of the reception desk. The plastic crinkles in his grip. “Can we talk? Are you taking a lunch break, or…?”

Eddie glances helplessly between Mike and the girl in the glasses. “I’m sorry, who are you?” he asks, genuinely apologetic.

“I’m Mike Hanlon.” Then, “I know you.” Mike says this part to himself—more of a realization than information that he’s passing on.

Eddie repeats his name, giving it his own spin. “Where do we know each other from?”

Mike latches on to the subtle difference between _where do we know each other from_ and _where do_ you _know me from_. “This is going to sound sketchy, but… I don’t have an easy answer for you. I will tell you everything I can if you’ve got the time. And we can go wherever you want, for however much time you can spare. Half an hour, fifteen minutes. Anything.”

Eddie’s eyebrows burrow even closer together as he studies Mike. Eventually, his glance shifts to just above Mike’s shoulder, catching the receptionist’s attention. “Hey Yui, if Nat looks for me, can you tell her I stepped out for lunch?”

Eddie declines the cheap takeout, citing a long list of allergies as his reason. Mike sets it aside and goes on to narrate the last thirty hours of his life, from his untimely memory loss to the discovery of Eddie’s name and number in his phone.

Eddie digests the information unquestioningly. Mike hopes that the easy trust is a sign that the immediate solace that enveloped him had been a mutual phenomenon.

“I brought more documents in my luggage. As soon as I get that back from the airline, I’ll likely have a better idea of why I’m seeking you out,” Mike tells him.

“That’s your first lesson on coming here,” Eddie says. “Never check your baggage. Dealing with the TSA post-9/11 is so grueling it should qualify as an Olympic sport.”

“Yeah, I see that now,” Mike says. “I had to check my bag in because I had a six-pack of Moxie. Which, come to think of it, I can’t understand how I ever came to the conclusion that that would be a good idea.”

Eddie tilts his head curiously. “You brought Moxie? Did you come from Maine?”

“Ayuh.”

A delighted gleam enters Eddie’s eyes. “I grew up in Maine.”

“Yeah?” Mike doesn’t pretend to be surprised.

“Yeah. We moved about… six years ago. And Moxie, I was so weird about Moxie,” Eddie recalls. “My mom would never let me drink soda, so I guzzled it whenever she wasn’t looking.”

Mike can’t restrain his laughter this time, imagining a (more) miniature version of Eddie upending cans of it down his gullet. “See, I always thought it tasted like medicine.”

Eddie reddens as if he’d been accused. “I don’t know if I ever liked it for the taste. It was probably more of the thrill of doing something you’re not supposed to. Teenage rebellion and all that. Some kids went with alcohol or nicotine, I went with revolting levels of sugar intake.”

“You sound like a real delinquent,” Mike teases.

Eddie grins proudly. “It was contraband in the Kaspbrak household. My friends had to sneak some for me. I hung out with a bunch of enablers. ‘Got a lotta Moxie in ‘ya, kid’.”

A tingle of familiarity wriggles through Mike. “Who used to say that?”

“Hmm?”

“You were impersonating someone just now, weren’t you?”

“Oh.” Eddie seemingly shakes himself out of a trance. “I don't know where that came from.”

“I’ve heard it before,” Mike says with a bone-deep confidence that he can’t trace the source of.

“Must've been a commercial or something,” Eddie surmises, but he’s no more convinced than Mike is.

When Eddie finds out how much compensation Mike is entitled to for his misplaced baggage, Eddie is indignant on his behalf. He throws around phrases like “the type of unconscionable conduct that dissolves the social contract” and “really puts me in a litigious mood”.

Mike doesn’t see it as that big of a deal. He’d already resigned himself to doing laundry daily. But Eddie is not a fan of this idea. He demands to help Mike acquire essentials for the rest of his stay in New York. As someone saddled with mountains of student loans, Eddie knows how to make do in a city that tries its level best to bleed you dry.

Eddie drives them deep into Queens— _really_ deep into Queens. He pulls up in front of a building that looks like a warehouse sporting recycled signage. After putting on a protective mask, Eddie leads Mike past the poster-covered double doors. The inside is compatible with its exteriors, looking like an abandoned building save for the open racks bearing pieces of clothing.

Upon Eddie’s insistent request, Mike rifles through the endless rows of plastic hangers. “What part of Maine are you from?” Eddie asks as he tails Mike.

“Derry. Small town near Bangor.”

Eddie’s already large eyes double in size. Although his mouth is covered, Mike is certain it’s agape behind his medical mask. “I’m from Derry.”

“I thought you might be.”

“You and I must’ve known each other. Or at least talked.”

“We were the only Black family in town, if that helps jog your memory.”

“You were the only one? That can’t be right,” Eddie says skeptically.

“You'd think.”

“No, really, you can’t be. I…” Eddie narrows his eyes. “Where’d you go to school?”

“Church School on Neibolt Street. You?”

Eddie grows rigid right around the time Mike says ‘Neibolt Street’. But he recovers and says that he went to Derry High.

“I knew some kids from Derry High.” Mike scans his brain for their names, but he comes up empty.

“You said you’re a journalist, right? Maybe you came here to interview me?” Eddie speculates. “I hope you’re not looking to ask me about Derry. It feels like a lifetime ago.”

“So not only do we hail from the same tucked-away corner of Maine, we’re also amnesia buddies.”

“It’s eerie when you put it like that. Do you think a place could be so atrocious that people shove it to their subconscious the second they leave it?”

Mike can’t tell if Eddie is kidding or not. “You didn’t much like it there, I take it?”

“The little I remember of it? Wasn’t great for me. My mom—she seems to remember everything with much greater detail—she won’t shut up about the time some assholes broke my arm. I had more bullies than friends.” Eddie pauses. “But I did have friends.”

“Your Moxie enablers.”

“Yeah.” Eddie’s tone goes wistful. “I didn’t have many, but they were all I ever needed. Though… I can’t even picture them right now.”

Mike makes another attempt to summon his own support circle. Yet once again, outside of Hazel and his coworkers, he comes up short. “You know what, I’ve been blanking on the names of my childhood friends, too.”

“You too?”

Mike nods. “It’s kind of bizarre. It’s like someone herded a bunch of us at one point and, like, mass-hypnotized us.”

Before Mike can backtrack with fake laughter—do something to pull the veil of normalcy back over his head—Eddie hums in fascination. “Now that’d be a story. You’ve got to get to the bottom of it if that’s true.”

Half an hour later, Mike has scoped out two more shirts and an extra pair of jeans. Eddie coerces him into trying on a dark-orchid dress shirt. The accompanying eyelash flutters are stupidly persuasive, hypnotic in their own right. So Mike humors him, ducking into a dressing room that’s really just a half-meter corner of the store cordoned off with a thin curtain.

With the buttons closed, the shirt is a tight fit, a snug stretch across his chest. In spite of this, Eddie’s assessment is unequivocal when Mike steps out from behind the curtain. “You should get that.”

Mike wiggles his shoulders, testing his mobility in a top that he has no intention of buying. “I don’t ever wear button-downs at work.”

“You should start. With that one.”

Mike turns to look at Eddie and spies a hint of pink peeking out from underneath his mask. Mike wants to blame the material of the long-sleeved shirt for the sudden warmth spreading through his torso. He’s suddenly grateful that Eddie’s face is half-covered, absolutely certain that without the obstruction, he’d be that much harder to refuse.

“I need to save some money for food,” Mike demurs. “Dollar pizza is tasty, but I’d rather not live off it for the next week.”

Eddie reaches out and touches the material of the collar, fingers skimming the edge of it down to the top button. Mike has a split-second fanta— _thought_. He has a crazed, madcap _thought_ that Eddie was about to unbutton the shirt, peel it right off Mike’s body so he could march up to the cashier with it.

Eddie does not to do any of that. Obviously. What he does is he whips out his wallet, brandishing his credit card. “We’ll charge it. You can pay me back. I mean, Delta can pay me back.” He ushers Mike back behind the curtain with adamant shoulder pats.

Later, Eddie will flip his phone open and hand it to Mike to key in his number. “I’ve got to make sure I can reach you once your check comes in,” he reasons before he trots up to the end of the checkout line, Mike’s new digs in hand.

Eddie parks a couple of spots away from the entrance to Mike’s motel. He fishes out a pill box from his bag and flicks open the lid of one compartment. He drops its contents to his palm and dry swallows the pills with expert efficiency.

“What are those for?” Mike wonders.

“Night regimen,” Eddie answers. “Supplements, blood pressure management, digesti—uh. Just stuff I have to manage.”

“Ah.” Mike stalls, not too thrilled by the prospect of getting out of Eddie’s car. Even though he realizes, astonished, “We spent the entire day together, pretty much.”

“I guess we did,” Eddie murmurs. “Why are you so easy to talk to?”

“Why are you so easy to listen to?” Mike counters.

“It's ‘cause you're a journalist,” Eddie decides. “Would you ever want to be on camera? You’re really handsome.” He’s blunt even as his gaze skitters downward. “There’s no one like you on the news.”

“I think that’s by design, actually,” Mike snorts. “That world’s not for me. I much prefer digging into things. I didn’t used to like it, but I’m becoming more and more my dad’s son every day. My dad used to keep an unofficial history of Derry.”

“Really? That’s so cool.” Eddie means it, breathless with admiration. “And it’s amazing that you’re doing what you want to do. Would you ever want to be a journalist elsewhere? Or do you want to keep plugging away in Derry?”

“I guess people say stick with what you know, right?” Mike says noncommittally. “Though to be honest, I doubt I’ll ever know enough about Derry. Like it’s a cold case that can’t be untangled in a single lifetime. And I can keep going, compulsively mining information from the same plot of land and never hit bottom.”

Eddie makes a wordless sound, encouraging Mike to go on.

“But at the same time… I come here, I see for myself how much of the world I’m oblivious to. And I’ve traveled less than 500 miles to see that. I’m in a completely different world and I haven’t even left one side of the country.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like. There’s an embarrassment of riches out there, an abundance of discoveries lying in wait. I’ve only come across a speck of it. An iota of a fraction of a speck.”

When Mike turns to Eddie, he looks enrapt. Mike gets this niggling feeling that he’s seen this expression before, on this very face. Only the orientation was a bit off, like maybe it used to be directed at someone else.

“What do you want to do?” Mike wants to know.

Eddie’s faraway gaze adopts an uncertain shadow. “I don’t know. Probably not what I’m doing now.”

"It seems comfortable," Mike says diplomatically.

“That’s exactly why my mom wanted me to do it,” Eddie mutters. “I mean, I don’t mind parts of it. Like, we have this one project on motor vehicle safety. We’re laying out these gaping holes in data because of the standards mandated by the auto industry.” He pauses for emphasis. “Mike. It’s appalling how compromised safety systems are because the research is so shortsighted. Do you know women have up to eighty percent higher risk of car crash injury because researchers are clinging to their homogenous crash test dummies?”

“That is appalling,” Mike agrees. “Maybe at your next job, you’ll be designing safety systems for cars.”

“Maybe,” Eddie allows. “I’d really like to be part of the testing process. I like getting hands-on with the machinery. You know, I actually had an interview at an auto testing company, but my mom swayed me from it. She was worried about overexposure to fumes, workplace accidents… you name it.”

“She sounds protective. I mean, mine is too, but. Have you tried reasoning with her?” Mike asks. “I think if you show her it’s what you really want to do, she’ll support you. At the end of the day, most parents want their kids to be happy.”

“I don’t know that my mom comfortably fits under the category ‘most parents’.” Eddie’s phone interjects with a piercing trill. “Oh, great, I had to invoke her name.” He checks the display. “Yep. It’s like we summoned her.”

“Probably a sign that I should let you go on your way.” Mike should be embarrassed by his transparent regret at having to call it a night. “Hey, thanks for the ride.”

“You’re welcome.” Eddie chucks his phone into his bag, ignoring its warbling. “Will you text me? When you remember why you’re looking for me.”

“Will do.” Mike is about to reach for the door handle when an idea graces him with its presence. “Oh, by the way, the shirt you paid for? I don’t know when that reimbursement will come in, so… What if I spot you for lunch or dinner tomorrow? Then we can call it even?”

Eddie’s triumphant beam is an answer in itself.

> 11/22/94
> 
> After his last period, Eddie drove us up to the overlook, where people like Dawn Roy and Brad Donovan would come to fog up their car windows from the inside. Eddie’s plans, I knew, were considerably less salacious. I know he wanted to talk, I just had no idea what about. Of course, the worst scenarios came to mind first. I don’t even want to transcribe what my wretched head came up with.
> 
> I quietly worked myself into a frenzy while Eddie girded himself to expel whatever it was that he had to get off his chest. We sat there with my least generous thoughts and Eddie’s asthmatic breathing. Then, Eddie shuddered out a thin lament that intoned how badly he missed our friends.
> 
> It was heart-wrenching to hear my own feelings of loss carried by his voice. I responded in kind, offering my own sorrow as some sort of pedestrian recompense.
> 
> And then he said that he never got to tell that Bill and Richie that he loved them.
> 
> I didn’t understand at first. “I’ve definitely heard you tell them that,” I said.
> 
> Eddie shook his head but he didn’t elaborate.
> 
> It got quiet again, so I reached out for his hand and held it in mine. He used his other hand to cover his eyes.
> 
> Suddenly, I arrived at a better hunch about what Eddie was trying to get at.
> 
> I couldn’t be sure. I could only guess that it wasn’t too far off from something I’ve come to learn about myself. Something I’ve never managed to assign words to.
> 
> I didn’t even know how helpful it would be to Eddie, but I tried to offer it to him, nonetheless. I got as far as, “When Bill and Bev were together, I…”
> 
> Eddie turned his bloodshot eyes on me. “What?”
> 
> “I wished Bev would just return Ben’s feelings already.”
> 
> I wouldn’t have been surprised if Eddie’s little bird-boned hand had given mine a fracture with how tightly he grasped it.
> 
> “But you're on your own on the Richie thing,” I continued, and that broke the tension.
> 
> It was easier for him to be more forthright after that. He confessed that he spent most of middle school infatuated with Bill, before his affection migrated to Richie. I can’t say I saw either of those coming, but looking back on those days with this new information in hand, it made sense. Eddie’s heart is much too big to be contained. Glimpses of the affection that it held—for Bill and for Richie—shone out of him like something tangible.
> 
> I admitted I wasn’t particularly interested in girls, either. I never used to associate that with a gender preference. To me, it was more of a general lack of interest. It wasn’t until a camping trip that landed me in a tent with Bill that I was robbed of that conceit.
> 
> But I hadn’t wanted this realization to be some identity-changing landmark. Being attracted to my ultra-charismatic friend was something I did, not something I was. That’s what I wanted to think.
> 
> Eddie could relate to the reluctance of taking on such a conclusive label. A lot if it was a deep-seated fear in the diseases that are supposedly associated with said label. He also used to blame it on having bad experiences with women all his life, except for Bev. Right before she disappeared on us without a trace, that is.
> 
> Then, I said something stupid. Something monumentally brain-dead.
> 
> I asked him if he wanted to kiss me.
> 
> To my credit, I never said the words “just to make sure” or anything in that vein, even though the implication was painfully clear.
> 
> Yeah. I know.
> 
> ## I KNOW.
> 
> Eddie rightfully turned me down, cautious and sweet in doing so. He didn’t want to do anything out of convenience, especially something of this magnitude. He didn’t want to sacrifice his one remaining friendship at the altar of experimentation.
> 
> I tamped down my disappointment and tried not to look hurt. I guess I was more curious than I first thought, and Eddie really did look pretty against the backdrop of the sun dipping into the horizon. But he made the right choice, and we came out better for it.
> 
> Fact of the matter is, we didn’t need to be kissed to come to terms with who we are. And we didn’t need to be kissed to understand that we found something special in each other. A companionship so complete that it lacks for nothing. So rare that it will not soon be replaced.


	3. Hell is other people

Eddie’s been getting home past midnight the last couple of days, and Sonia has berated him for every minute that she couldn’t personally account for. He blamed it on a busy period at work, which wasn’t particularly convincing, but was more palatable than the truth.

Two days ago, he and Mike traversed Brooklyn bridge by foot. Mike dawdled with the speed of a honey waterfall, which Eddie pardoned with unprecedented grace. Slowing down to Mike’s countryside ambling pace wasn’t as annoying as it could’ve been, not when it allowed Mike to unleash his inner photojournalist.

The following day, Eddie welcomed the weekend by touting Mike around the American Museum of Natural History. Mike had been lukewarm about the idea to begin with, as natural history is slightly outside his realm of interests. Cut to an hour or so later, Eddie was all but dragging him away from the biodiversity exhibits.

Mike enthused about the many animals he’d taken care of in his youth. Naturally, Eddie was obliged to then picture Mike crooning to birds and sheep and other barnyard creatures flocking adoringly around him. Between that and Eddie’s Cinderella curfew, the pair of them are practically a deconstructed Disney princess.

Eddie’s next thought was less absurd, though not by much. He was visited by a hazy recollection of a farm. However, the picture in his head was ill-defined. It was more like a composite of stock images. Idyllic cliches that were waterlogged, resurfacing after having been submerged for some time. He almost mentioned it to Mike, but the latter distracted him with an anecdote about a heifer that would compulsively lick his face.

When nighttime came, Eddie accompanied Mike to the spot he detested above all else… Times Square. Normally, he’d rage against this congested cesspool of filth and kitsch. This time around, it was worth it to see Mike’s eyes reflect the glitz of Broadway’s billboards.

They ended up at a comedy bar, where they were promptly bamboozled by its two-drink minimum. At the end of the night, Eddie was mounting full-throated proclamations that it was physically impossible to be tipsy after two glasses of wine. Not that it stopped him from letting Mike get a steadying arm around him. The pleasant buzz from overpriced Pinot Noir paired with proximity to an objectively attractive person doused Eddie in a rosy, warm flush.

In short, it was the best Saturday Eddie’s had in a while.

Selfishly, Eddie would’ve elected to spend Sunday with Mike, too, if not for the appointment that the other has to make. It’s just as well, because Sonia isn’t letting Eddie off lightly for four days in a row. “Yesterday was your day off,” she notes.

“I had to pitch in.” In a lapse of judgement, Eddie blurts out that one of his officemates got food poisoning, causing a backlog at work.

This predictably sends Sonia into one of her routine fits. “You have to vet where your office orders from, or where they get their catering from. You must _insist_ on it. It’s your right as an employee. You watch out for these latte liberals—they’d have us pay higher taxes for ‘public good’, then turn around and refuse to invest in workplace safety within their own walls.”

“I don’t eat anything that the office orders,” Eddie says when he’s finally able to get a word in edgewise.

“That’s good,” she approves. “I know you try your best. But there’s nothing we can do about the particles left in the microwave.”

“I know.”

“You understand why I look out for you like this, don’t you?” Sonia warms his cheek with an almost possessive palm, her thumb stroking his cheekbone. “Don’t you?” she prods.

“I do,” he forces out.

“You’re just like your father,” she elaborates anyway. “Such a kind soul, but such an awful stubborn streak. You got that from him. Both of you ignore how delicate and prone to sickness you are. And you saw where that got your dad. He left me—he left _us_ because he was too proud to take care of himself.”

_He didn’t leave us_ , Eddie wants to object.

“Now you’re all I have,” she professes, breath hitching with unshed tears. “I can’t let the same thing happen to you.”

“You won’t lose me, Ma.”

“It means so much to hear you say that.” Sonia’s apparent sincerity makes Eddie feels a little guilty for the ambivalence behind his earlier sentiment. “I love you so much. Oh, if you only knew. You’ll understand, once you have a child of your own.”

Eddie flinches so violently that he almost wants to double-check that his skeleton hasn’t leapt from under his skin.

Sonia continues, oblivious to his internal screaming. “I love you more than life itself.”

“I love you, too.” That part’s always easier to say.

“Give your Ma a kiss.”

She offers the side of her face to him, and he purses his lips and quietly obeys.

Mike lets the doorbell button sink for three counts before he brings his hand back to his side. He idly notes the peeling paint at the corner of the doorframe. The turquoise layer arches away from the surface, flashing a wedge of deep carmine underneath—the same shade as dried blood. Uncovering a part of the past that was once concealed.

The door jerks open, startling him.

On the other side of it are two middle-aged women, mismatched in height but mirroring wary expressions.

Mike doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until he consciously has to release it to speak. “Hi, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for Ms. Aileen Hidalgo.”

The taller woman glances at her companion, who scowls. “Are you serious?” the shorter one demands. “Are you the guy that’s been calling and harassing us?”

“I am truly sorry for bothering you.” Mike injects as much authenticity as he can while rushing to get his words out. “My name is Mike Hanlon, I’m a journalist. I just have one thing I was hoping to verify with you. My colleagues and I have been in touch with Mr. Darren Marshall, and—”

“Fucking Darren,” both women chorus, cutting Mike off.

Mike hesitates for a second. “…Yes. Well, we told him that the contact information he gave us was wrong, but he insisted that Ms. Hidalgo would be our best bet to get in touch with Mr. Dominic McDade.”

The shorter woman visibly bristles. Her companion grips her elbow. “Aileen, it’s okay.” The taller of the two looks at Mike, heaving a sigh. “Dominic was the name on my birth certificate. I no longer use it. My real name is Riana Hidalgo.”

“Oh. I see.” Mike shuffles uselessly. He wills himself out of his stupor. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Riana. Are you… Er. Just to confirm, Ms. Veronica McDade was your mother?”

“Yes. Could you maybe stop with the ‘miss, mister’ business?”

“Of course. And Mi—Brandon…?”

“…was my brother,” Riana finishes. She then amends, “Is.”

“And Darren is her shithead cousin who can’t muster the fucking decency to call Riana by her name. Are we done running through her family tree?” Aileen questions.

Mike makes a conscious effort to stop fidgeting. “Yes, we’re done. As I said, I’m a journalist. I work for a local paper in Derry, Maine. Right now, I’m investigating a chain of horrific events that occurred in 1962. It peaked in the summertime, when violent crimes would happen within hours of each other.”

“My family moved to Syracuse in April of ’62,” says Riana.

“Yes, your family was ahead of the curve,” Mike acknowledges. “A few months ahead of the others. Most made their way out of Derry around August or September.”

“And you flew all the way here to ask me about that?”

“It’s part of a larger story. Our paper covered the crime wave in ’89, when history pretty much repeated itself. Now we’re working our way back. I’ve been able to speak with a few former residents. Got their perspective on what it was like to live in Derry back in the sixties.”

“I was a child back then.”

Mike nods emphatically. “Children’s viewpoints from those times are uniquely significant, considering the nature of the crimes that took place. I’d like to hear about your experience, if you’re up to sharing it. I’d love to hear what your last few months in Derry were like. What your family might have told you about why you were leaving town. Conversations you had with your teachers, your classmates, your neighbors?”

Riana lifts her chin, considering him. “What do you know about Brandon?”

“Your brother? I… We saw that he passed away before you and your mother left town.”

“Do you know how he died?”

Dread seeps into Mike. “Not in so many details.”

“There was a man. Butch,” Riana sneers. “He and two of his buddies cornered me. Told me what type of atrocities God would want done on me.” She scoffs again. “He didn’t get a single punch or kick in—not a good one. Brandon found me and he helped me get away.”

“Thank god.”

“I was a skinny kid, and Brandon was hardly any bigger. We fended them off with our teeth and our knees. But Butch and his goons—it wasn’t enough that there were three of them. They came with knives, too.” Riana pauses. “I rushed Brandon to the hospital. I didn’t have a license yet, but I couldn’t get a hold of my mom and none of the neighbors were home. He told me how to turn on the engine, how to use the stick. I kept it on fourth gear the entire time. Ran every red light. But…”

Aileen nuzzles her forehead against Riana’s arm.

“We lost him that night,” Riana eventually says. “He lost too much blood.”

“None of this was mentioned.” Mike thinks back to his notes for anything that might corroborate Riana’s account. “I went through all the town archives…”

“Of course there’s no record of it. Nothing gets past the blue wall of silence. Uniforms protect their own, no matter how darned they get.”

_Blue wall of silence._ “Butch Bowers,” Mike whispers when it dawns on him.

“The one and only.”

Mike shakes his head. “I’m so sorry for what you and your family went through.”

“So you see, right?” Riana says. She gestures to herself, the delicate kaftan she’s wearing. “You understand why my mom booked us out of there the first chance we got.”

“Because…” Mike starts, stretching out his sentence as he skims for a continuation.

“Because this—” she waves a hand in front of her body once more “—isn’t safe in Derry.”

“Hell, it’s dangerous here,” Aileen pipes up. “But here, we’ve got numbers.”

“I’m- I’ll be honest. I’ve never met anyone like you, Riana. I can’t imagine how Derry must’ve been like for you.” Mike knows this to be true, even if he’s well-acquainted with being despised over something immutable and intrinsic.

“You don’t have to imagine what it’s like,” Riana says. “My mom couldn’t, either. As you said, there’s no one like me in Derry. No one we knew of, that is. But that never stopped her from empathizing.” She pauses. “She didn’t always get it right. The woman disowned her brother for refusing to accept me, but then she readily listened to psychiatrists who diagnosed me with a disorder. But no matter what, I knew she loved me.”

Mike thinks of his own mother. Her balancing act of empowering him while at the same time instilling protective measures that are fundamental to a Black body’s safety. “She sounds like a good mother.”

“She was more than that. She was a good person.” With her arms entwined with Aileen’s, Riana shuffles a few steps from the doorway, making space for Mike to enter. “Tell my story. I don’t think it’s what you’re looking for, but it’s worth getting out there.”

“Absolutely,” Mike agrees and promises at the same time.

“I want to tell my mother’s story, too. And Brandon’s.”

“Then I’ll help you do it,” Mike says. “You and me, we’ll tell those stories.”

Mike breaks into a lively jog when he spots Eddie and his mother seated at a bench, looking out into the Triborough Bridge.

Eddie notices him at almost the exact same time. He brightens. “Mike! Hi!”

In rapid succession, Sonia shifts from confusion, to curiosity, to suspicion, to outright contempt. This is all before Mike has a chance to offer up a greeting of his own. “Hi, Eddie,” he says to his dimple-wielding friend. To the surly companion, “You must be Mrs. Kaspbrak. Good afternoon.”

“Mom, this is Mike,” Eddie cuts in when Sonia doesn’t say anything in return. “He’s from Derry, too. He’s here to interview people for the Derry Tribune.”

“Oh, is that so? I’m not familiar. We were always a Derry Herald household,” she says.

Mike lets out a chuckle formed mostly out of nerves. From behind his back, he produces a modest bouquet, a joyful burst of pinks, oranges and yellows. He approaches Sonia carefully, flower-first. “Eddie messaged me saying you two would be here, and I passed by this—”

“Oh, no! No, get away from us! Get those away from us!” Sonia rises from the bench and bodily shoves Mike away, slapping his bicep ineffectually.

Eddie springs to his feet as well, grabbing her arm and pulling her away. “Ma! What are you doing?”

She ignores him, pinning Mike with a searing glare. “You come to us with daisies? _Daisies_?! My poor Eddie is allergic to pollen. Do you not know how badly that could aggravate his asthma? You need to leave right now!”

“I’m fine,” Eddie asserts. “Mike, it’s okay.”

“I am so sorry, I’ll get rid of them.” Mike dashes to the garbage can at the end of the street and disposes of the flowers. As he does, he’s struck with the thought they’re in the middle of a park brought to life with a constellation of blossoms… surely that means Eddie’s allergies aren’t that severe? Still, he returns to them with a properly apologetic look. “I’m truly sorry.”

“It’s okay, you couldn’t have known,” Eddie assures.

“It’s understandable. You don’t know my Eddie very well,” adds Sonia.

“I suppose not,” Mike stammers like it’s hurtful to admit.

Sonia clutches her son’s elbow. “It’s about time we head home.”

“Mm-hmm.” Eddie pays no mind to her tugging, gaze confined to Mike’s face. “Hey, are you doing anything for dinner? You should join us if you’re free. We can give you a ride.”

“Eddie,” Sonia snaps in warning.

“I’m cooking tonight. I can make extra,” he says to her under his breath.

“Think of the state of our house,” she hisses back. “It isn’t fit for guests.”

“No, I cleaned this morning,” insists Eddie. “Come on, you have Caitlin and Abby over every other week. I never invite anyone to the house.”

“Eddie, please.” Sonia’s growing agitation leaks out through her clenched teeth. “That man was holding daisies. He came from a flower store. Don’t make it out like this is personal. All I’m doing is making sure our house stays free of asthma triggers.”

“But I’m fine,” he says again.

“We were just talking about this.” Sonia’s voice climbs, ditching the veneer of politeness. “Everything I do, I do it for you. Why don’t you see that? I love you more than any person can be loved, and you treat me as if I were a villain.”

“I’m not! I’m just saying I’m fine. You’re overreacting about the pollen—”

“Overreacting!” she repeats, incredulous.

“—because you know I’ve got my inhaler with me and there’s Claritin in the car. Ma, please, Mike’s going back to Derry soon!” Eddie implores.

As much as Mike wants to rack up more time with Eddie, he can’t bear to cause friction between mother and son. “Actually, Eddie, I do have to check with Delta where my bag is. But thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it.”

Eddie’s head whips in Mike’s direction. “Wait, they still haven’t found your luggage? You’ve only got three days left!”

Eddie’s panic is contagious, seizing Mike’s heart and throttling it. Three days left. “Yeah. So I really ought to make sure I go home with what I left with.”

“Alright,” Eddie relents. “Tell me how it goes, okay?”

“I will. See you, Eddie.” Mike offers him a smile and he gets a quiver of one in return. He nods at Sonia’s direction, channeling the external geniality that his parents instilled in him. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Kaspbrak.”

She responds, “you too,” with her back already turned to him.

Mike has scarcely drifted out of hearing range when the interrogation begins. “Is that who you’ve been spending your time with these past few days?”

Eddie wordlessly pleads the fifth, which Sonia takes as confirmation.

“I will not have you seeing him anymore. Do you hear me?”

Eddie’s retort sidesteps his prefrontal cortex, storming past his lips. “Give me one good reason why not.”

Sonia reels back, stricken. “Do not speak to your mother that way.”

“Give me one good reason, _please_ ,” Eddie grits out.

“Eddie.” She groans, a perfect blend of put-upon and distraught. “Son, don’t take this wrong way. I’m your mother. I know you. You—I tried to raise you right. I did. I did everything I could to keep you from those… those sick influences around you. Those heathens that corrupted you at such a young age.”

Eddie closes his eyes against what he hopes is not an impending migraine. “What are you trying to say?”

“I love you. You’re my son,” Sonia adds, like their blood relation is indisputable proof of her affection. “But—my dear boy, my poor baby. You’ve acquired a fetish. You must be cured of it.”

“A fetish?” Eddie spits out disbelievingly.

“I know it’s hard to hear. The sooner you accept it, the sooner you can be free of it.”

“Free of what? The burden of friendship?”

Her expression curdles. “You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play stupid. Go ahead, hate me for looking out for you.”

“I don’t hate you,” protests Eddie.

“You can return my love with hostility, but I will never stop protecting you. From others or from yourself.”

> 1/13/97
> 
> I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve called. Each time, it was always her that picked up. Did she get the phone surgically attached to her face? It isn’t even her house, it’s her sister’s!
> 
> If insanity can really be defined by the act of doing the same thing again and again, expecting a different result each time, then I’ve officially quadrupled my eligibility as Derry’s chief persona non grata.
> 
> And I don’t mean the fact that I’ve been dialing the same number ad nauseum, to no avail. I mean that I’ve already gone through this routine with Bev and Bill and Richie and Ben and Stan. I knew our fate the second Eddie told me that his mom was selling their house to go live with family in New York.
> 
> And yet, I can’t help it. I can’t let go of this damnable hope. What if this is the one time that one of my friends will remember me? After all, the others were younger when they left. Eddie’s the only one who moved out of Derry as an adult.
> 
> It’s a shot at the dark, but I can’t afford to pass it up. I can’t discount the chance that I haven’t lost Eddie for good. Perhaps I could get him back, if I could just get him on the phone.
> 
> I’ve wondered about the extent of their memory lapse. How much have they forgotten? Is it a cluster of targeted memories that gets voided once they step out of Derry? Or is it a total reset, tabula rasa?
> 
> It’s bad enough to think that the memory of our friendship didn’t survive past Maine’s borders. It’s even worse to think that even more might’ve gotten consigned to oblivion. I can’t think of anything worse for Eddie, especially.
> 
> Eddie hadn’t known about his mom’s Munchausen syndrome by proxy until a couple of years ago. He’d been aware of what she was doing when we were much younger, but he apparently went along with it in exchange for a modicum of freedom. He’d gulp down her sugar pills if she’d let him leave the house after dinnertime, for example.
> 
> It’s twisted that he has to barter for a bare minimum of autonomy. But if he’s robbed of what little leverage he has, he’d be fully beholden to his mother’s deceit once again. The control that he wrested back from her would slip through his fingers.
> 
> I need to reach out to him. Doesn’t matter if there’s straitjacket with my name on it. I need to keep trying.

Sonia Kaspbrak sleeps like a person with a clean conscience.

That is why, when Eddie sneaks past her and shuts the front door behind him, she doesn’t notice. As he revs up his car and the headlights flick on, she remains motionless in her bedroom.

He sets the GPS to John F. Kennedy airport and pulls out of the driveway.


	4. where patience is bitter, may its fruit be sweet

“I’m sorry for waking you up,” Eddie frets as soon as Mike opens the door for him.

“No, I told you, I was organizing my notes.” Mike inspects the bag, running his hand over the zippered sides and checking the attached tag. “Thank you so much for doing that. I can't believe you had to storm the airport to rescue this thing from their bureaucratic clutches.”

“Turns out if you throw around enough legal jargon and make empathic gestures, they’ll give you free rein of their backrooms.”

“You should also probably be Caucasian while you’re at it.”

“That—okay, yeah, that didn’t hurt.”

“Not to diminish what you did. Because I don’t know anyone who’d do such a thing for me, let alone succeed. So, really.” Mike tries to convey his gratitude with a meaningful look. “Thanks.”

Eddie averts his gaze. “It wasn’t a problem. Seriously. They kept telling me, ‘sir, calm down, we’re looking into it’. Except they couldn’t have been, not when your bag was right. Fucking. There!” He punctuates the last few syllables with chopping gestures, making the air feel his wrath. “I didn’t have to rummage all that much, it was practically in plain sight! Anyone who spent more than five minutes out of their day could’ve picked it out.”

Mike shrugs, strangely at peace in contrast to Eddie’s incensed state. “They’ve got other things to worry about.”

“I get that, but it doesn’t absolve them from jerking you around for as long as they have!”

“No, it doesn’t.” Mike elects not to explain why he doesn’t rail against every single injustice levied on him. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You already did,” Eddie points out.

“For a midnight slog to JFK? I owe you dinner at the very least. Plus, I can’t imagine your mother letting you wander about at this hour without…” Mike wracks his brain for a civil euphemism. “…significant resistance.”

“Hard to pick a fight when you’re fast asleep,” Eddie advises conspiratorially. “Even for Sonia Kaspbrak.”

Mike snorts. “If you don’t want to deal with her tonight, you’re welcome to stay here. I usually sleep on a twin at home, so I don’t need all this space.” He nods at the bed.

Eddie gawks at Mike for an unbearably long time, prompting the latter to backpedal.

“Or I could stay on the floor. I fall asleep anywhere. I just figured, it’s real late and all.”

“No, yeah. I really don’t want to drive anymore tonight. It’s dark out, and…” Eddie squints at the bed, scouting his opponent. “I want to stay with you. Is that okay?”

“That would be an ideal condition for you staying the night.”

Eddie putters around the small room while Mike takes inventory of his prodigal belongings. Among them are his clothes, toiletries, that godforsaken six-pack of Moxie, and a stack of notebooks that take up half the space.

Mike tosses Eddie an extra pair of shorts and a shirt to sleep in, and Eddie disappears with them into the bathroom to freshen up. When he returns, Mike’s height advantage makes itself apparent in the billowy drape of his shirt on Eddie’s slighter frame.

Having largely avoided entanglements of the romantic variety, Mike’s had scant opportunity to witness another human being cocooned in something that belongs to him. The tightness in his chest and shortness of his breath imply that he could’ve used a lot more preparation for this moment.

When it’s time to retire, he takes the left side of the bed, hugging the edge of it to give Eddie as much space as physically possible. On the other side of a moat of pillows, Eddie says something halfway audible about the type of dreams he’d like Mike to have.

An inordinate amount of unblinking time passes until Mike resignedly slips out of bed. Eddie had conked out as soon as his head hit the pillow, but Mike wasn’t as lucky, despite Eddie’s relatively unobtrusive presence. Eddie’s rhythmic exhales are more soothing than anything, and he hardly makes a dent in the mattress. But he may as well be a pair of warring rhinoceroses, for all the awareness that Mike’s senses are devoting to him.

In the dark, Mike silently gropes for his journals inside his bag. He takes them out and carries them to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He doesn’t want to bother Eddie with the lights. He sits on the closed toilet lid and cracks one notebook open—the one he’d last written in.

> 9/9/02
> 
> Ever since Hazel got Angela to rubber-stamp the trip, I’ve been conceiving contingency plans to keep my head on straight beyond Maine’s borders. I can’t presume that I’m no more susceptible to the Derry curse that afflicted my friends. Unfortunately, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only plan that’s both foolproof and decently practical is to take all my journals with me. Nothing else can fill in the gaps quite so thoroughly, and nothing will have the same instant credibility as my own handwriting.
> 
> So, here goes.
> 
> Hey there, Future Me. First, I think congratulations are in order. I take it your plane didn’t crash? I’m ecstatic for you.
> 
> To recap, you are currently in New York to interview Veronica McDade’s only surviving son, Dominic. I’d wager you know that already. You’re also there to check in on your friend, Eddie Kaspbrak. I’m less optimistic that you’ve retained that directive in full.
> 
> If you need to remind yourself of who Eddie is, check these entries: 8/31/93, 9/7/93, 9/13/93…

A string of dates follow—rows and rows of them. The final date in the series is _12/31/94_. Below that is a single line.

> You wrote about Eddie in just about every entry in 1995 and 1996. Take your pick, Future Me.

Eddie nestles and groans in pure, animalistic contentment. He’s only had this shirt for a few hours, and he’s already deeply possessive of it, unable to fathom parting with it. For a prolonged moment, he toys with the idea that he’s brave enough to ask Mike what detergent he uses.

He carefully sneaks a peak at the opposite end of the bed, turning to his other side with caution typically reserved for handling antiques or detonating bombs. He’s equal parts relieved and disappointed when he finds vacant space next to him.

He glances around the room and finds the bathroom door closed. Light from inside escapes through the gaps in the doorframe.

With a nonnegligible amount of regret, he rolls out from under the covers and pads over to the window. He draws the curtains back, gently brightening the room. Reflected sunlight glints peculiarly from one spot on the floor, catching Eddie’s eye. Upon closer inspection, he discovers a bundle of photographs. He picks them up, intending to place them on the desk. But his limbs go on mutiny the second his eyes skim over one of the photos.

It’s a photobooth printout of seven faces crammed in each frame. One kid has cheeks as full and rosy as apples. Another has hair like a poinsettia in bloom. Yet another wears glasses fit to be a sitcom prop.

Eddie recognizes Mike right away. He largely preserved his younger self, save for the slighter build and the longer hair. Next to him is a boy whose undeviating poker face may as well have been copy-pasted into all four frames. On the other side of the boy is Eddie. Eddie is smiling, flashing each of his teeth for all they’re worth. As though it would be the last time for a while that he’d be that unreservedly happy.

Eddie sits at the edge of the bed, scrutinizing the images that walk the tightrope of familiarity. The six faces surrounding his—Mike’s included—are like a word at the tip of his tongue. Just a hair’s width out of reach.

“Oh, you’re up. Good morning.”

Eddie’s head snaps up. “Morning.” He promptly follows that up with, “What are these?”

Mike gets an eyeful of what Eddie’s holding. He makes a strangled sound like the atmosphere is thickening around them.

While Mike assembles a response, Eddie notices the whiff coming from the bathroom. “Is that—are you brewing coffee in bathroom?”

Mike sheepishly palms the back of his neck. “Yeah. I was starting to fade and I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“You’ve heard of caffeine dependence, right? It’s like a drug—no, it _is_ a drug. Caffeine intoxication is a thing, you can overdose from it, and quitting it can cause withdrawals.”

“Yeah, I believe it. But, speaking of caffeine.” Mike crosses the room in a couple of loping strides until he’s leaning over his luggage. He sifts through it and yanks out a familiar-looking six-pack. He ambles over to Eddie, placing the bounty on his lap. “I know now why I thought this would be a good idea."

Eddie glances at it. Moxie. The token of his childhood defiance. “You brought it for me,” he intones, not quite a question.

“We need to talk,” Mike says. “Can we meet once you’re done with work?”

“Yeah, but why can’t we talk now?”

“I’m still picking through the weeds,” Mike admits. “The long and short of it is we knew each other. You and I, and those five other kids—” he points to the photo that Eddie first gravitated towards “—we were best friends. By virtue of being each other’s only friends, at the time.”

“I remember. Not the names or—” Eddie lets out a frustrated noise. “How did I forget? How did we both forget?”

Mike hangs his head, hands on his hips. He’s somewhere between Superman and Charlie Brown. “I’ve written some theories in my journals, I don’t know if… I don’t know. I can’t give you a proper answer right now. I need to do some more catching up. But if you can meet me tonight, I can tell you everything you need to know.”

“You’ll tell me everything?”

“Everything you need to know,” Mike repeats.

> 8/4/00
> 
> Where do I begin?
> 
> Realistically speaking, there’s no way I can sum up the last four months of my life. In my defense, I didn’t mean to neglect this journal. It’s just been hectic with the new job. To be honest, I wasn’t aware that a salaried position was even in the cards. My community college degree in Anthropology is really punching above its weight.
> 
> It’s not without cost. The work lends itself to obsession. The deeper you dig into a story, the more questions you exhume. You expose avenues to investigate, perspectives to consider, red herrings to nullify, snarls to unravel… You get the point.
> 
> My news editor doesn’t immediately shut down the threads I want to pursue. Hazel lets me regurgitate every spark of inspiration, unroll each one to their full extent… before telling me it’s more trouble than it’s worth, more often than not. But the rejections are beside the point. It’s enough for now that I’ve got a chance. Even a chance at a chance. And she did greenlight a major feature story about the 1989 “crime spree”.
> 
> When I first pitched it, I didn’t have much to back it up. I lived through it, yet I’d be hard-pressed to offer details past the air reeking of grief and terror. Which brings us to today. Or, today-ish. Thirty weeks deep in research. Barbara at the library quipped that I’d taken Ben’s spot, except my exclusive interest in periodicals with grisly headlines was even more remarkable than Ben’s rotation of poetry and reference books.
> 
> A couple of months ago, I hit the mother lode. It was right in my very own attic. I rifled through boxes that gathered cobwebs, mementoes that I couldn’t bring myself to donate. And there they were. Clippings, photos, rough sketches, elaborate accounts in my dad’s penmanship… My old man truly had an insatiable appetite for hording memoirs.
> 
> I cross-referenced the anecdotes my dad recorded against the library’s microfilms. Sure enough, the broader narratives aligned. In nearly every instance, one thing led to another article, another lead, another name. Sometimes, another decade. It has taken me to far-flung bibliographical sections, from lore to quantum physics. It led me to study psychic dimensions, modal realism, beings that predate written history.
> 
> A part of me adamantly believes that I’m moments away from closing my hand around the truth underlying that summer. Something I was a part of, along with Eddie and Bill and the rest. Something we survived. Something that continues to wake me up at night with an afterimage of a slavering maw and Swiss Army knife teeth. The connection is there, right beneath the surface. I just need to bring it to light.
> 
> Though, I don’t even know what’ll happen if I do get to the root of it. Will identifying the cause come with an obvious next step? Will that be the moment that I need to tag the others in, have them join the fray?
> 
> Failure awaited me with each miserable attempt to contact my friends. I’m under no delusion that that’ll change soon. Even so, I’m confident that if I sent them my finished article, it’ll send them running back to Derry.
> 
> Truth be told, I’m less concerned about their willingness to return than my ability to justify it. There’s no question that, whatever I choose, there will be deaths on my conscience. The question will be how many.

Mike shows up fifteen minutes late to the hole-in-the-wall Polish restaurant where Eddie is waiting for him. He had gotten caught up doing his final interview with Riana, eager to accumulate all the input he can to stitch the narrative together.

Eddie is, for lack of a better term, noticeably sulky when Mike joins him.

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting long. I think that means I’m buying dinner _and_ paying the tip.”

“I don’t mind,” Eddie mutters without taking his eyes off the menu.

Mike tilts his head, observing Eddie. “Don’t do this. Don’t hold back like—like you think I won’t hear you out. I’m not your mother.”

Eddie drops his bland veneer, evidently not expecting to be called out. And in fairness, he didn’t have the advantage of a refresher, unlike Mike. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be passive-aggressive, I was just… I couldn’t get a read on you this morning. You were kind of… evasive, maybe? I was scared you wouldn’t show up and I’d be kept in the dark.”

“I was always going to show up,” Mike says emphatically. He draws a long breath. “I’m sorry, too. I get engrossed in what’s in front of me and— And it’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have made you wait.”

Eddie shakes his head. “So we’re going to talk about it? The stuff in your journals?”

Mike takes a chug of his water.

He’d gone back and forth on editorializing their history. It seemed wrong to rope Eddie into it at this juncture, based on half-formed hypotheses that have yet to bear themselves out. But then, it stands to reason that Eddie’s recollection of Derry would reset once all reminders of it are removed from his vicinity. In no time, any conversation they have will rid itself from Eddie’s consciousness.

With that in mind, Mike spills their secrets—the entire gamut of them. Secrets that belong to Mike, or to both of them, or to their hometown. He brings up the rock fight that put their tormentors in their place. He reminds Eddie of the times they’d drive up to the farm to get their fill of wooly snuggles. They laugh about Eddie disseminating corrective pamphlets to counteract his professor’s error-riddled lecture on electromagnetic radiation.

Their sniggers dwindle when Mike broaches the topic of recurring brutalities that their hometown has consigned to coincidence.

By the end, Eddie’s scowling down at his upturned hand. Mike notices, just then, a searing tingle in his own palm. Pain makes inroads along the diagonal crease, echoing the path traveled by a jagged edge of glass so many years ago.

“Eddie…?”

Eddie tears his gaze away from his palm and collides with Mike’s. “What if you’re wrong?”

“If the pattern dating back to the eighteenth century proves to be a coincidence after all?”

“Yes. What then?”

Mike has thought about giving up more often than he can count. But the prospect of walking away completely is slowly turning into a pipe dream. The longer he digs his heels, the less able he is to cut his losses. “Then I’m wrong,” is all he says.

“And where does that leave you?” presses Eddie. “What happens to the time you used up hunting nothing?”

“I know what I’m giving up. But in the long run, it’s not that bad,” Mike reasons. “What’ll I miss, really? Will the Grand Canyon disappear if I don’t make it there in the next ten years? Is New York about to go extinct?”

“I don’t know, Mike. Why don’t we ask the World Trade Center what it thinks about that?”

Mike frowns at the reminder that Eddie’s got a rolodex of traumas that he can choose from. “Someone’s got to do it. Don’t you think so?”

“I do,” Eddie admits, if sullenly. “But why does it have to be you?”

“Don’t feel bad for me. Look, maybe I won’t have museums within arms’ reach, or comedy bars or—” Mike stops himself. “Any of that. It doesn’t mean I won’t have anything. I’ve got a life in Derry. Improbable as that sounds. I’ve got an interesting job, I’ve got friends. If I’m wrong and I stay, then, yeah. I spend another ten years there harboring false impressions.”

“Thirteen years,” Eddie corrects sharply, like three years make all the difference. “If it happens every twenty-seven years, like you said, then the next time would be 2016.”

“Thirteen years,” Mike amends indulgently. “But… you get it, don’t you? If I’m _not_ wrong and I _don’t_ stay…”

Eddie shakes his head, refusing his conclusion.

“Do you remember how you used to take placebos in exchange for your mom not getting involved in your personal affairs?” Mike inquires. “That was your choice. It wasn’t a perfect solution by any means, but… did you regret it?”

Eddie arches an eyebrow. “Placebos?”

“The inhaler. The medicines.”

“…What?”

“They’re not real,” Mike announces sluggishly, bogged down by the realization that Eddie must come to terms with his mom’s abuse for a second time.

“What do you mean they’re not real?” Words punch out of Eddie in mechanic bursts.

“I’m sorry.” Mike watches in concern as comprehension and horror bloom side-by-side on Eddie’s face. “Do you want me to go? If you need some time alone to—”

“No. I don’t want to go home.” Eddie blinks as the maelstrom in his head settles into a storm. When he speaks again, it’s soft. Strained. “I don’t want to be alone, either. You’ll be gone in two days. ‘Til then, I don’t want to be anywhere you’re not.”

Mike struggles to speak past the knot in his chest. “Works for me,” he manages. “Where do you want to go?”

“You pick. Your last two days here.”

“So I keep hearing.” Mike bites his lip. “Hmm. All I know of New York is what my personal tour guide showed me this past week.” Abruptly, inspiration strikes. “If you’re ready to pass the baton, I think I can find someone else to show us around.”

Eddie deletes another voicemail from Sonia. He knows without opening it that it’s a repeat performance of hysteric jabbering. It’d have her greatest hits: she hasn’t seen him all day, she’s worried sick, he’s literally killing her by breaking her heart. He pockets his phone when Mike’s interview subject shoves a salt-rimmed glass into his hands.

“Oh, thanks. How much do I—”

“It’s Monday Margs, Peanut. Don’t worry about it. Girls get ‘em on a dime.” Riana sends him a wink.

Eddie thanks her again and clutches the drink to his body, gratified. He does another once-over of the dive bar. In all his time in New York, this is the first time he’s stepped foot in Chelsea. He would’ve never known of this place if Riana and Aileen hadn’t led him and Mike here.

The bar teems wall-to-wall with men and women in varying levels of undress. The ceiling is lined with inflated unicorns with rainbow manes and tails. There’s a karaoke stage currently occupied by two women—one in massive board shorts and the other in a floor-length corduroy skirt—and an excessively sweaty man in nothing but sandals and boxer briefs. The three of them are dancing-lurching as they sing-chant Peaches’ _I U She_.

“How long have you and Aileen been married?” Eddie asks as he takes a stool next to Riana.

“We’ve been civil partners for twenty-two years now.” As she answers, she tracks Aileen’s movements on the dancefloor with tender vigilance.

“Twenty-two years,” Eddie repeats reverently. “That’s amazing.”

“That’s why I’m not threatened by whatever’s going on there.” She nods to her partner who is, at the moment, miming spirited spanking over Mike’s rear. “Not to knock your man or anything.”

Eddie bursts into laughter. “Mike and I aren’t, uh. We’re friends.”

“You’re just friends?”

“I don’t know about ‘just’. I don’t have many friends, so… Being friends is plenty to me.”

Riana raises her glass between them. “Cheers to that.”

Eddie clinks his glass against hers with a flourish. He bops in his seat to the club patrons’ brazen caterwauling, content to watch Mike and Aileen’s antics in Riana’s company. He drains his drink mindlessly. Before he’s able to put it down on the counter, a man appears at his side. “Looks like you need a refill.”

Eddie thoughtfully considers his empty glass. He’s already slightly buzzed, stomach half-empty after the revelation about his so-called ailments spoiled his appetite. “I should probably get something to eat first. Do you guys serve food here?”

The man ogles Eddie with a curious mix of interested and insulted while Riana coos, “ _Peanut_.”

“I don’t personally, but there’s a first time for everything.” The man’s brow ripples with blatant suggestion, exaggerated so that it doesn’t fly over Eddie’s head this time. “What are you in the mood for?”

Eddie gulps, catching on. He appraises the stranger, from his artfully sculpted hair to his relaxed racer back, dropped arm holes putting his pecs and lats on display. “I…”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Riana reminds him gently, careful not to let the other man hear.

“I’m fine,” Eddie insists automatically. He slips out of his seat, touching her shoulder reassuringly. To the man awaiting an answer, he repeats, “I’m fine. I can go check with the bartender.”

“Yeah, cool. I was headed there myself.” The man holds out a hand as he sidles up to Eddie, falling into step with him. “I’m Ben.”

Eddie takes another glance at him. He isn’t the _right_ Ben, that much is clear. This Ben’s eyes appear nice enough, but they’re missing the assurance of infinite patience. Eddie’s dumbfounded staring goes on far too long before he finally replies, “I’m Eddie.”

Eddie scans the dancefloor and swiftly picks out Mike from the crowd, now joined by both Aileen and Riana. Mike is already looking at him. He sends Eddie a hint of a smile in acknowledgment.

Instantly, Eddie puts some distance between him and Wrong Ben. He can’t imagine Mike having a problem with this. He wouldn’t have come here with Aileen and Riana if that were the case. Still, Eddie’s seen one too many arbitrary lines drawn in the sand when it comes to tolerance.

Eddie excuses himself in short order. “Actually, you know what, I don’t need a drink. I need to rescue my friend from a night of third-wheeling.” He ignores Wrong Ben’s cajoling, ditching him to squeeze through the gyrating throng on his way to Mike.

As Eddie gets closer to them, Aileen and Riana holler out welcoming noises without relinquishing each other. Mike’s grin settles more comfortably on his face, a balm to Eddie’s anxiety.

“What was that?” Mike inquires, tone light.

“Do I really need to say it?” Eddie huffs. “I always thought it was written all over me when we were younger. Fucking Bowers and his gang had me figured out.”

Mike looks like he’s about to disapprove. Instead, he says, “You remember how we both had a crush on Bill?”

“…No shit.”

“We were all kinds of incestuous, in retrospect.” Mike’s eyes crinkle in amusement. “We weren’t into him at the same time, at least. I think you’d moved on to Richie by then.”

“That’s not better, that makes it sound like I’m—” Eddie’s lips twist sourly. “Like I just fall for everyone.”

“Two people hardly adds up to ‘everyone’. And even if that were the case, there’d be nothing wrong with it,” Mike opines. “You know, for a group called the Losers Club, we were a fairly crush-worthy gang, if I can say so myself.”

“You _can_ say so yourself.”

Mike raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean? Want to explain that to me?”

Not particularly, Eddie thinks. “I want to dance.” He brushes his fingers against Mike’s wrist. “Preferably with someone who isn’t wearing a strip of cloth as a top.” He jerks his head towards the bar and the potential free drink that he walked away from.

Mike pinches the fabric over his sternum. “Good thing I had a smart guy to help pick this shirt out for me.”

“Are you low-key calling me a smartass?”

For a while, Eddie does little more than bounce his knees to the bassline while he soaks in Mike’s physical expressiveness. Stiffness bleeds out of him as Mike keeps shooting him giddy looks and throwing playful elbow bumps. Eventually, their hands find each other. Eddie allows Mike to sway him gently to a rhythm that’s a beat or two behind the song permeating the air.

“Thanks for going along with me that day I dropped by your office,” Mike says. “Given our childhood and what I’ve picked up from my line of work, I don’t approve of running off with strange men. But in this case, I’m glad you did.”

“Thank you for finding me.” Eddie stops moving to better absorb Mike in the moment. The sight of him, forehead dotted with perspiration, loose with exhilaration. For one night, they’re as free as Eddie often imagined they could be. His hands release Mike’s, moving to map the breadth of Mike’s shoulders. He buries his face in Mike’s chest, wishing into its sturdiness: “I don’t want to lose you again.”

“I’m still here.” Mike strokes Eddie’s back soothingly.

Eddie lifts his head to look up at him.

“And no matter where I am, you won’t lose me,” Mike continues, one hand coming up to cup Eddie’s jaw.

Eddie elongates his spine. He cranes his neck up until he can count every hyperbolic curl framing Mike’s deep brown eyes. “I wish you could stay.”

“I wish…” Mike holds Eddie closer as the other pushes up to his tiptoes. “I wish.” He tilts down, drifting into Eddie’s space. Eddie’s breaths come out in heated puffs from his parted lips, and Mike draws in his next sigh through his mouth. Mike breaks eye contact for a second, gaze flickering low on Eddie’s face, unintentionally meaningful.

Right before Eddie can cant up another inch, hurtle up to rid them of the final gap, Mike gets a hand on the back of Eddie’s head. He leads Eddie’s face back into his chest, his grip tight.

Eddie hears the thundering pulse of the body he’s pressed against and he feels lips press firmly over his hair.


	5. Spring forward, Fall back

Adamant to avoid his mother and/or not leave Mike’s side, Eddie decides to camp out in Brooklyn for a second consecutive night. Mike is already sprawled half on top of the sheets when Eddie climbs into bed next to him, clad in Mike’s shirt and underwear he’d picked up at the 7-Eleven next to the motel.

Tequila-addled as he is, Mike still picks up on the wardrobe anomaly. “Where’re your shorts?”

“I got them wet ‘cause the shower curtain wouldn’t close all the way,” Eddie drawls, words stumbling into one another. “Sorry. Do you think it’s unsmee- unseemly?”

Mike responds by throwing a leg over Eddie’s bare ones. Eddie tries to kick him off amid a peal of floaty laughter, putting little effort into escaping.

“It’s the other way around,” Eddie mumbles after a while.

“What is?” Mike wonders if he’d said anything out loud.

Eddie manages to wriggle a leg out from under Mike and he stacks it atop their intertwined limbs like they’re playing human Jenga. “I’m the one who needs to keep you in place.”

“What- In place, as in, in New York?” Mike scales an octave or two.

“Yes. You’ve accumu- acc- acme-” Eddie cuts himself off with a huff.

“Acclimated?”

“Yes, that! You did more in a week than I did in a fucking year,” Eddie claims. “You could absolutely stay here. There’s so many news… people… things you could work for.”

“Sure.” Mike’s not looking to argue with an Eddie whose stubbornness is exacerbated by alcohol.

Eddie budges up closer, tightening the tangle of their legs. “You could go back to Derry later. _Later_ later. Why won’t you even consider that?”

Mike imagining other possibilities has never been the problem. “I do have to be there. I can’t let myself forget.”

“You won’t forget, you have those.” Eddie flaps a hand towards the table where Mike’s journals are piled up.

“Those can get lost, damaged, stolen… This trip only proved how fragile plans can be.”

“Fragile,” Eddie repeats with bald derision. “We’ll get the important parts tattooed.”

Mike chuckles.

“I’m serious!”

“I just pictured myself asking some unsuspecting tattoo artist to turn me into a walking obituary.”

Eddie exhales loudly. “How badly do you want to be a martyr? Was this why you were so hard up for Bill?”

“Look who’s talking,” Mike retorts without much bite. “And I’m not martyring myself. Derry isn’t the torture chamber you’re making it out to be.”

Eddie scoffs but offers no further argument. His eyelids shutter closed. Soon, the tense wrinkle of his brow and pucker of his mouth abate, smoothing out into a semblance of restfulness.

In the stillness, Mike makes a mental record of the moment. It’s possible that he’s a few levels short of appropriate, what with how intently he’s sopping Eddie up with his pupils and how he aims to master the texture of his body heat. As Mike submits himself to hedonistic gawking, the subject of his attention wriggles onto his front, stretching half on top of Mike. Without warning, Eddie plants his lips on the corner of Mike’s mouth.

Mike is too stunned to rein his hands in and they fly up to Eddie’s sides of their own accord. Encouraged, Eddie inches up in almost undetectable increments. His breath fans over Mike’s face, a peppermint tease. He teeters torturously between too-close and too-far, until all at once, there are no gaps left to close.

Eddie’s lips are soft (of course) and the resolve behind them is strong ( _of course_ ). Mike knows what’s going to come out of this—he knows it all too well—but there’s only so much he can resist. He responds to Eddie’s every movement in kind, abiding by Newton’s laws of motion.

Eddie scatters wayward kisses along Mike’s jaw and down his neck, alternating between faint and firm. Always chaste, no matter where the back of Mike’s mind might take it. Eddie slips lower to kiss Mike’s shoulder before snubbing his nose against it. He wraps an arm around Mike’s waist, whispering, “Night, Mikey.” Without even trying, he can pinpoint the rifts in Mike’s stoicism with surgical precision.

Rather than begrudge him for it, Mike gathers him in his arms, reciprocating his tenderness. “Good night, Eddie.”

Eddie slits small, anxious ruptures through the plastic handles in his grip. There’s a lingering shame induced by a few specific items stashed between his otherwise innocent groceries. He couldn’t say why, but it felt especially improper—naughty, even—running out to presumptively buy such supplies at six AM on a Tuesday morning.

Back at the motel room, he finds Mike on his belly over the carpet. He’s surrounded by loose sheets of paper bursting with his scurrying penmanship. “Hey!” Mike pulls himself up to his elbows, grinning as he watches Eddie organize his purchases. “I thought you left for work.”

“I called in sick,” Eddie explains offhandedly.

“You did?”

“I got you an egg and feta cheese wrap from 7-Eleven. You eat eggs, right?”

“Yup,” Mike confirms. “How’re you feeling? No hangover?”

Eddie responds with a dismissive wave.

Mike continues to observe him. “Is that a bacon-wrapped hot dog?”

Eddie glances at it with a twinge of guilt. “Yeah. Does that gross you out? I can go to the lobby and eat it there.”

“What? No, come on. I make my food choices, not yours,” Mike says. “I’m just—I don’t know, is proud right the word? Two days ago, you were scraping the skin off your chicken tenders.”

“I’m due for a little cholesterol,” Eddie sniffs. “I got fruit cups to balance it out.” He plucks out the foodstuff from the plastic, avoiding the bag’s other contents. “Orange juice. Chips. Mixed nuts.”

“Breakfast of champions.” Mike gathers his wayward notes, shuffling them into a single pile.

“You don’t have to stop what you’re doing.”

“It can wait.” Mike puts his menacing stack of papers away, joining Eddie at the corner table. He gratefully accepts the wrap even though it manages to look even more dubious than the grab-and-go snacks at Derry gas stations. “Have you talked to your mom?”

Eddie scarfs down a chunk of his hotdog with commensurate ferocity. “For a bit. Just long enough to convince her not to mobilize the NYPD.”

“You didn’t bring up the whole phantom disease business?”

“I haven’t figured out how to go about it,” Eddie admits. “I don’t know. Right now, I can’t come up with many options that I can live with.”

Mike, somehow understanding that Eddie isn’t looking for advice, simply commiserates. “I hate that you have to go through this. I know you can handle it, but I hate that you have to.”

Eddie worries his bottom lip and changes the subject, and Mike lets him.

With their bellies full on their convenience store spread, Eddie asks to see Mike’s pictures again. Mike obliges him and sifts through his journals, eventually placing them in Eddie’s eager hands.

Eddie’s smile is automatic when he gets a hold of the photographs. His favorite is still the photobooth strip, but the others warm him, as well. There’s one of the seven of them around the Hanlon dining table with Will and Jessica. Eddie with Ben, flashing a thumbs-up sign in front of the finish line on a racetrack. Eddie and Mike cradling a Labrador Retriever between them.

He clutches the photos fervently, knowing their time together is set to expire. Along with that, he’ll have to relinquish Mike, too.

He wishes he could convince Mike that there are acceptable alternatives to self-sacrifice. Maybe there’s no reconciling their divergent paths, not when Eddie’s outrunning the past that Mike is submerging himself in. Regardless, Eddie can’t afford to admit defeat so easily.

Eddie musters everything in him that resembles courage and announces, “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Okay.”

Eddie opens his mouth then snaps it shut. He does about three more iterations of this as the humidity beneath his collar builds. “I kind of…” Finally, his questionable ambitions whoosh out of him. “I’d-like-it-if-you-joined-me-and-I-mean-in-a-totally-unweird-way-like-how-we-were-in-the-quarry-kind-of-thing-except-it’s-dinky-and-indoors-but-yeah-it-totally-doesn’t-have-to-be-weird.”

Mike’s jaw unhinges. He looks like he’s got a dazed rejection at the ready, which Eddie fumblingly intercepts. “It can be quick, and we can face away from each other,” he cajoles. “Look, I hate to be so fucking clingy, but you’re leaving tomorrow. Who knows when we’ll see each other again?”

In the time it takes for Eddie to double-guess himself—and triple, quadruple, and quintuple-guess—Mike gets to his feet. He locks eyes with Eddie and nods. Without further preamble, he makes his way to the bathroom.

They start out facing opposite sides of the shower, with Eddie bearing the strike of the spray. Behind him, Mike fiddles with the packaging of the miniature bar of soap. Their steady chatter alleviates the bumbling tension somewhat, without ever eradicating it completely. Eddie’s off on a tangent regarding the virtues of community gardening when Mike interrupts him to ask, “Could you get my back?”

Over his shoulder, Eddie spies Mike holding out the soap by his side. “S-sure.” He turns fully to face Mike and grabs the soap from him. He focuses on the slippery expanse of skin in front of him as it broadens even more with every inhale. He pins the soap against Mike’s back and draws large, looping arches with it. His free hand joins in, kneading Mike’s skin with the kind of reverence required to handle the holiest of entities.

Eddie eventually deposits the soap into the dish affixed on the wall, flattening both palms over velvet contours. He runs his hands up absurdly well-defined shoulder blades and fondles along the sides of Mike’s torso to find a tapered waist. He shuffles forward before he can stop himself, arms encircling the man in front of him. He burrows into the concaved slash of Mike’s spine and breathes.

After some time, Mike offers, “Want me to do yours?” A bassline rumble reverberates where they’re skin-to-skin.

“Can you help with my hair?” Eddie counteroffers.

Mike’s response comes out mangled, forcing him to clear his throat to try again. “Of course.”

Eddie lets him go and orients himself towards the shower again. Without looking behind him, he knows that Mike is following suit. He takes a calming breath as he hears a lid click open, and before long, Mike is threading purposefully through his damp hair.

Mike works up a lather with decadent ministrations, light scratches combing through the soaked strands. The careful touches soon turn into massages as Mike’s thumbs work their way down to Eddie’s nape. Eddie’s teeth clamp down on both lips, caging in a noise that would invite irreparable awkwardness. But he can’t suppress the urge to tilt his head back into Mike’s touch, nor the loud breathing that he swears is audible over the roar of water.

“Eddie.”

Eddie makes a low inquisitive sound in his throat, not trusting what his open mouth would emit.

“I might need the shower alone,” Mike rasps. Eddie tries to twist his neck to look at him, but Mike keeps working his scalp firmly, unyielding. “Or I’m gonna need you to turn down the water temperature by, like. Twenty degrees.”

“Uh, let me wash off.” Eddie skitters forward and gestures behind him, beckoning Mike to join him under the spray. “Come on, don’t waste it.” A pause. “The water, I mean.”

“I don’t know if…”

“Come on.” Eddie whips around, groping for Mike’s hand and tugging him forward. Even with Eddie’s vision slightly impaired, the sight of Mike’s entirely bare front sends his heart into advanced palpitations. He forces his eyes not to dip any lower than Mike’s collarbone, but there’s no helping the distinct shapes that wandered into his periphery.

“I’m sorry, it—” Mike begins.

“Shh, I don’t care. I mean. Me too, obviously.”

Mike glances down rather conspicuously, but his neck snaps back up right away. “Shit, sorry.”

“No, shut up, just rinse off. We’re getting out of the shower, okay? Bathrooms are the most dangerous room in the house and I’m not letting either of us get injured all because I’m too horny to keep upright.”

Mike’s response is unintelligible garble that Eddie wouldn’t have had the lucidity to parse anyway. Eddie steps out of the tub as carefully as his frenzied state allows, then helps Mike make his own safe exit. It’s only until they’re both out of the bathroom that Eddie yanks Mike down by the arm, craning up to seal their mouths together.

The slide of their lips is hot and slick, a delicious melding of heat that does away with any sense that either of them exist outside of each other. Eddie nibbles on the plump lips until they part for him, letting him seek newer, deeper angles.

“This isn’t going to go well for either of us,” Mike warns through inquisitive swipes of Eddie’s tongue. His caution doesn’t translate into his brazen exploration into Eddie’s mouth, lapping at Eddie and making him dizzy with want. “I haven’t done anything in a while.”

“Me neither,” Eddie confesses without shame. “I just need—” He guides Mike to the chair closest to them, pushing him down on it. He follows suit, scooting until his back is flat against Mike’s chest. He swivels to claim another kiss, and he’s unable to stop from squirming into the stiffening length at his tailbone. He should get up and fetch the lube he bought, but he’s incapable of renouncing the position they’re in. He settles for licking a stripe on his palm, splaying his legs open and grabbing his dick.

Mike’s coarse breathing flutters at the shell of Eddie’s ear. His hands sweep down Eddie’s inner thighs, skate up Eddie’s ribs, mapping new territory through touch. Thumbs sweep over Eddie’s nipples, making him pump into his hand with vigor. When Mike’s hands wander down and nearly clear the circumference of his waist, Eddie throws his head back and whines.

“Your hands are huge, what the…” Eddie fucks his fist, and it takes no more than a few brisk swipes until he’s spilling into his hand. Mike wants in on it, lacing his fingers with Eddie’s where he’s dripping obscenely. Eddie chants Mike’s name like a wanton gospel.

Mike nudges Eddie’s chin with the side of his clean index finger. He leads Eddie into a thorough kiss that makes him arch back in chase. “All week,” Mike underscores, husky and on edge. “All fucking—I don’t even know how long.”

Eddie gives Mike one last kiss before dismounting him. He drops between Mike’s thighs, folding his legs underneath him. He glances at his filthy palm then lets it rest at his side, sparing no further consideration for its hygiene. “Can I?” he implores, pitching forward to telegraph what he wants.

The panic in Mike’s face contradicts the attentive twitch between his legs. “You don’t have to.”

“I know.” Eddie’s heart thrums persistently as though he hadn’t just finished—and with Mike still granite-hard, he _hasn’t_. “Can I?”

“Yeah, yes, please.”

Eddie summons a mental image of the condoms he’d stashed away earlier, but it fizzles out in less than a second, losing out to feverish anticipation. He scrapes an appraising finger along Mike’s member, then tongues the tip for starters. He gets a hit of salt and bitter musk, with an aftertaste of soap. He gets a few more licks in before closing his mouth around it with more conviction. A swirl of his tongue brings out an impressive moan from Mike.

He slides forward, taking in as much as he can before his throat protests. He pulls off by instinct, grasping the base of Mike’s dick with his mucky hand as he recuperates.

“Fuck.” Worshipful profanity rings in the air in Mike’s voice, but it could just as easily have come from Eddie.

Eddie takes him in again, filling his mouth to capacity and tasting them both in the process. He bobs up and down the seemingly unending shaft, groaning around it until the tremors in Mike’s thighs intensify. He’s about to dislocate his jaw to get more of Mike in, and it makes him reach down and cup his spent cock. He risks an upward glance, and blearily makes out Mike panting helplessly above him.

Mike thrusts up into Eddie’s mouth when they make eye contact. “God, you look—you feel so— _So good_ , you’re so good.”

Eddie twists his wrist with heightened urgency. He gags on Mike’s girth more than once, and he has to duck under the seat to spit out excess saliva.

“Hey, slow down,” Mike smooths a wet lock of hair behind Eddie’s ear, petting him.

Eddie coughs and sniffles. He blinks away the watery sheen clouding his view before going back to bruising the back of his throat.

“Eddie! Fuck, Eddie, wait, you gotta—” Mike rushes to nudge Eddie off. It’s just enough time to give Eddie a close-up view of his spit-shiny cock before white streaks spurt from the engorged head, some of the thick strands catching at Eddie’s nose and chin. “You’re a maniac, you know that?” Mike grates hoarsely. “A stubborn, gorgeous maniac.” He cups Eddie’s jaw, gently wiping around a self-satisfied grin.

Mike spends his last day in New York cooped up in his motel room. He popped out once to pick up a late lunch/early dinner from the corner bodega, then swiftly retreated back into the bubble he and Eddie created for themselves.

There’s plenty to satiate him in their self-contained hideout. Like getting his lips around Eddie, tasting blurts of salt that lead down to a straining length. Listening to Eddie snuffle behind him while he’s swathed in the other’s barnacle-limbed embrace. Bending Eddie over the bathroom sink, watching his mouth form Mike’s name in gasps that fog up the mirror. Laughing at each other’s commentary when they deign to notice the trashy program on TV.

Holding on to Eddie, in whatever way. However transiently.

This is another one of those moments. Sitting on the edge of the bed with Eddie perched on his lap, split open on his erection.

“Do you think I’ll forget this?” Eddie asks in lieu of answering whether Mike is hurting him.

“You might.”

Eddie adopts a scowl. Not angry or sad, but fiercely defiant. “If we do this right, maybe I won’t.”

“I can’t say for sure,” Mike says, unwilling to spare Eddie from the truth nor strip him of his tenacious hope. “You good?” he asks again when he bottoms out, fighting to compose himself while almost suffocating from the exquisite heat around him.

Eddie begins to undulate his hips, but Mike’s grip stills him. “Mike,” he keens.

“You okay?” Mike tries one more time.

“Would be if one of us could fucking move,” Eddie slurs wetly against Mike’s skin.

“You’re okay,” Mike translates. He corrects himself unthinkingly, “You’re amazing. Just bear with me a little longer?”

Eddie sighs, as much out of bliss as impatience. Mike sympathizes, but their last round had been rather brutal and inadvertently acrobatic. While the enthusiastic route had its merits, Mike just wants to savor this time as much as he can.

He relishes learning what it’s like to be with Eddie this way. Yielding to each other’s form, sweat-slick thighs molded over hip bones. Evidence of Eddie’s pleasure nudging his abs. Eddie keeps still, save for tiny shudders that overtake him. He winds his arms and legs around Mike, locking them into a position that says to _stay like this. Stay, stay, stay._ Mike doesn’t hear the incantation as much as he feels it—tastes it—a message that dances around his tongue.

“How about now?” Eddie wheedles, half into Mike’s coaxing mouth.

“You’re being so good for me.” Mike moves to nuzzle Eddie’s cheek and give it a soft peck. “Will you let me be good to you, too?”

Eddie relaxes impossibly in his embrace, going pliant on top of him. “Any day now, you monster.”

A bark of laughter slips out of Mike. “That’s one way of asking.”

It might be the first time Eddie’s ceding control of his own accord—control that’s finally his to give or take as he pleases—and he chooses to be manhandled over Mike’s dick. That alone gets Mike’s blood to a boiling point. He rewards Eddie’s trust by giving him exactly what he wants. He sinks his fingers into Eddie’s flanks, anchoring his grip, and bounces him onto shallow, exploratory thrusts.

“Oh Mike, that’s perfect.” Eddie rolls his hips to meet him, fucking back with escalating demand.

“Can you take more?” Mike manages to check while driven half-delirious by Eddie’s insistent writhing.

“Yes. Fuck yes. Please, _please_ , I can take it. Make me feel it tomorrow,” Eddie pleads. “Want to feel it for _days_.”

“The mouth on you,” Mike means to tease, but it comes out closer to praise. He holds Eddie down with a bruising grip and plants his feet on the ground, hips raising off the mattress. He slides in as deep as he can and stays there for an agonizingly long, mind-melting moment and their joint cries startle the air. Eddie feels like a miracle.

Mike weaves his arms through the space below Eddie’s bent legs, forearms tucking under the back of his knees and hands gathering his fleshy bottom. Mike lifts Eddie off him until only his tip breaches Eddie’s entrance, then stuffs him full again. He starts to hoist Eddie along his cock at an unrelenting pace, grinding up whenever Eddie descends.

Eddie paws at Mike, scrambling for purchase. “Don’t let me forget. Can’t forget how good this is.”

“Fuck, Eddie, if I could, I’d never pull out. Live the rest of my life keeping you as close as I can.”

Eddie’s damn near wailing when warmth shoots out of him. He ruts mindlessly against Mike, making a tacky mess on his stomach. The clenching around Mike is almost too much bear, so tight it walks the line of pain. He lets Eddie’s legs down in favor of holding him closer, and Eddie takes advantage, capturing Mike’s lips in his. Mike gives as much of his tongue as he does his dick, wants to be wherever Eddie would open up and have him. Eddie crosses his ankles behind Mike, rocking his hips and riding the aftershocks of bliss. “Do it, Mike. Come inside me.”

Mike groans with shocking immediacy. He clutches the small of Eddie’s back and allows himself one wild buck into the welcoming heat, releasing with a moan that Eddie greedily swallows for keeps. Their kiss is sloppy and uncoordinated, punctuated by errant gasps whenever one of them lets loose with an involuntarily rough thrust.

“You’re unbelievable,” Eddie informs him, sounding almost affronted. “How are you allowed to feel this good?”

Mike’s soul echoes his sentiments. “How are you allowed to be such a hypocrite?”

Eddie cackles and peppers Mike’s temple and cheeks with kisses. “Nap for a bit, then a do-over? Want to try with you laying down next time.”

“A hypocrite with brilliant ideas. See you in an hour,” Mike says indulgently, letting his lips snag with Eddie’s one more time. His back is screaming at him, seconding the need for rest. The rest of him, however, wants nothing more than to stay put. Eddie’s perfect in his arms and he can’t digest the thought of letting him go.

As if Eddie senses this, he holds on to Mike with everything he’s got—his legs and arms and lovely wounded eyes.

Mike pleads with the night, asks it to _please slow down_ and _let me have a little more time with him._ In return, the night stretches on, calm and unhearing.

After Mike stuffs the last of his belongings into his bag, he moves the zipper in microscopic degrees, making as little noise as possible. Eddie’s still asleep. His features are doused in moonlight, lightened by slumber. Mike watches over him until the welling in his eyes impairs his vision.

Maybe this wouldn’t feel so unfair if Mike could know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the future outcome will be worth the concession he has to make at present. If he could just be sure that, years down the line, he’ll receive irrefutable proof that he’s making the right choice to walk away from this.

He tries to combat the heaviness in his chest by bringing to mind the image of Eddie dancing, abandoning his long history of hurt and anxiety for one stolen moment of freedom. That night, Eddie moved as he pleased. He failed to notice their less-than-sanitary surroundings and (almost) accepted a drink from a man who was interested in him. That Eddie’s going to be alright, with or without Mike.

Mike can’t drag that Eddie back into any world that puts limits on him. Not yet, at least. In the end, Mike might have to rope Eddie and the others into his cause. But not yet. Hell, maybe he’ll never have to.

For now, there is one thing he can do. He can make sure that Eddie has a fighting chance to _stay_ free. 

He just has to make sure Eddie doesn’t slip back into his mom’s abusive clutches after Mike leaves for Maine and takes his memory cues with him.

Mike can’t save Eddie, but he can arm him with tools to save himself.

Eddie’s hollow stomach thunders resoundingly, finally compelling its owner to clamber out of bed. He had no intention of rousing until Mike returned from wherever he’d skedaddled to, but his overworked metabolism has issue with these plans.

He checks his phone to see if Mike had left him a message of some sort. He’d woken up with no companion other than a distinct soreness throughout his body that thrilled him as much as it left him bereft.

His phone fetches no clues as to Mike’s whereabouts. He frowns upon discovery that not only is there no message from Mike, his call log has also been conspicuously pared down. It’s now an uninterrupted history of his mom monitoring him, missing any indication that he and Mike have been calling each other to coordinate plans.

He scans the room. Aside from the shirt Eddie’s currently swimming in, Mike’s things—his spare clothes, notebooks, luggage—are nowhere to be found.

Eddie’s chest thuds laboriously as he glances back down at his phone. He opens his contacts and scrolls down to the M’s.

_Marisol Agbayani… Matt-Calculus II… Micah Zuckerman... Natalie Khan._

His phone clatters to the ground. Before he even pieces together what happened, he’s already seething with disbelief. “You asshole. You…”

Stinging, furious tears assail him. He rips Mike’s shirt off—pelts it to the ground and steps on it, crushing it into the carpet with his heel. He crumples at the foot of the bed, bare-naked and curling into a fetal position.

It takes a humiliatingly long stretch for the sniveling and hiccupping to taper off. In that time, he works out that Mike’s efforts to literally delete himself from Eddie’s immediate surroundings were born out of good intentions. That’s who Mike is, and Eddie has no reason to believe otherwise. But rather than console Eddie, it dismays him.

When he finds Mike, he’s going to give that scheming, paranoid, too-gallant fuck a piece of his mind.

Well, if it’s Mike’s turn to run, then it’s Eddie’s turn to give chase. As soon as Eddie can be in the same house as Sonia, he’s going to consult the yellow pages on their telephone stand. It won’t be difficult to track Mike down. How many Michael Hanscom’s could there be in Derry?

_Wait._

Eddie catches on to the faulty mash-up that his glitching brain clunked together. Hunger and heartbreak do zero favors for his mental capacity…

He commands his fritzing synapses to get themselves in order. He needs them to function if he’s going to retrieve Mike Hanlon.

An opaque fog displaces details of Eddie’s most recent days. A name and face lose distinction, drifting into oblivion with none the wiser.

Earlier, Eddie held onto scraps of notions and made what he could of them. He knew that he meant to find a man from Derry. He perused the phone directory with no specific direction, merely gravitating towards Matthew’s and Mark’s and other vaguely biblical names listed with a Maine area code. One time, his brain supplied him with _Gabriel?_ which really threw him for a loop.

By the time the handmade bruises along his waist and thighs recede, he forgets why he placed the phonebook on his nightstand. He moves it back to the living room.

The days that follow are nondescript. His work gets inexplicably tedious, its payoff paling by the hour. His interactions with his coworkers shift from amiable to performative, seemingly overnight. Clashes with his mother sharpen. They make his nights no more eventful, only more wearisome.

Bracing for another humdrum afternoon in the office, Eddie offers Yui a smile that he prays isn’t as bland as he feels. If he’s unconvincing, she doesn’t show it. She lilts a greeting before chucking a manila envelope at him. His amused snort at her cheery “good catch, chief!” is passably genuine.

As he walks to his cubicle, he turns the envelope over and sees his name scrawled on top of his office address. There’s no return address to go with it.

He plunks himself at his desk and opens the envelope. He peeks inside, examining the contents. He pulls out pieces paper by the handful ranging from whole pages to torn strips. One sheet, a light purple cardstock, is folded neatly. Eddie smooths it out, revealing the same compressed scribble as in the neighboring sheets.

> Eddie,
> 
> I’m sorry for leaving without saying goodbye, and for shanghaiing those photos you were so into. Previous comments about the “goodness of my heart” were wildly flawed, you see. But I like to think I’m not completely irredeemable, which is why I’m mailing you these pages from my journal. Parts of it are redacted, but they’re intact enough to accomplish their mission. (Fingers crossed.)
> 
> I send these in hopes that they remind you that there’s someone out there who cares for you. That someone is blown away by the gentleness of your heart and the strength of your will, despite repeated attempts by those around you to erode both. There’s someone who wants nothing more than to take you with them, had their destination been more habitable. Up to now, they wrestle with the notion that their fears are unfounded and that their life would be better spent keeping you close.
> 
> Even if you can’t quite recall that person’s name, I hope these journal entries give you an inkling of who you are to them. I hope you have it in you to believe that you are so deeply and so painstakingly loved. Even though the person who loves you hasn’t been able to tell you face-to-face.
> 
> I hope this makes sense someday. But if that day never comes, then please just know one thing: this was real. No matter what dishonesties you’re made to endure, trivialities you find yourself mired in… Know that this one thing was real. It’s been real for a long time, and it’s got no plans of stopping.
> 
> Always,  
>  Your Friend

Eddie takes stock of the sheets he littered around his workspace.

> 12/20/96
> 
> Tonight, Eddie and I snuck into the campus library. We reminisced like a couple of 90-year-olds. We talked about the girl that chased ███ around to his utter bewilderment. The comics ██ drew and █████ wrote about a seven-person supergroup…

> 11/22/94
> 
> Fact of the matter is, we didn’t need to be kissed to come to terms with who we are. And we didn’t need to be kissed to understand that we found something special in each other. A companionship so complete that it lacks for nothing…

> 1/13/97
> 
> Eddie hadn’t known about his mom’s Munchausen syndrome by proxy until a couple of years ago. He’d been aware of what she was doing when we were much younger…

> 8/4/00
> 
> A part of me adamantly believes that I’m moments away from closing my hand around the truth underlying that summer. Something I was a part of, along with Eddie ██ ███ ██ ██ ███…

He struggles to take in air, overwhelmed by specific phrases in the sea of ink. Two in particular take root in his brain.

 _His mom’s_ _Munchausen syndrome by proxy_.

And, _we found something special in each other_.


	6. Epilogue: half of our kingdom

> Postcard from Savannah, GA
> 
> 3/31/05
> 
> Savannah is the kind of stunning that makes you want to slap yourself. I’m honestly mad that I hadn’t heard of it before coming out to Georgia. The waterfront, the oak trees, the stone fountains… It’s almost perfect. Close, but it’d be that much better if you were here to take it in with me. (No offense to the lovely company I’m currently keeping.) You’d think I’d be done missing you by now, huh? But I’ve yet to find a landscape that couldn’t be significantly improved by your presence.

> Postcard from Alliance, NE
> 
> 4/7/05
> 
> I had to come here. A replica of the Stonehenge made from vintage cars? Obviously I had to. All day I imagined the face you’d make at this spectacle. This graveyard of car trunks planted in the ground, monoliths crafted out of spare parts. It’s so aggressively ridiculous it’s inspiring. Welcome to America, right? It’s a good thing I had a reason to head to the Nebraska Panhandle, otherwise I don’t know that I would’ve strayed this far off the beaten path.

> Postcard from Santa Fe, NM
> 
> 4/13/05
> 
> You’d get such a kick out of New Mexico. I don’t just mean the landscapes, the food, and the art. Every corner in this sprawling state is chockful of some combination of history, nature, mysticism, and curiosity. It’s a discoverer’s paradise. You figure out fairly quickly why a certain writer would choose to live here and mine inspiration from it. He thinks you’d like it here, too. Next time I wander out to this side of the country, you better believe I’m taking you with me.

Eddie finishes his morning ritual of wiping down the bathroom sink and kitchen counter, sanitizing the doorknob and light switches, giving the floors a perfunctory sweep. On a more regressive day, he does these to combat undead afflictions. On a day like today, however, it’s no more than a soothing habit.

With his chores out of the way, he partakes in a favorite pastime. He picks up one of Mike’s journals and runs his thumb along its edge. He flips through the hefty notebook to single out an entry that he’s particularly fond of.

> 12/13/03
> 
> Okay, if my handwriting’s fucked, it’s because my hand’s still kind of shaking.
> 
> I’m… processing. For all the research I’ve done in the supernatural, this is what’s making me doubt reality.
> 
> Eddie is in Derry. Eddie Kaspbrak is in my living room, scoping out potential spaces for his belongings.
> 
> He showed up at my door some three or four hours ago, lugging his (non-figurative) baggage. I didn’t say anything at first—I don’t make a habit of speaking to mirages. What I said was never of any consequence in these mental vacations, anyway. In a split-second he’ll take me in his arms and let me drown in him, on the cusp between a memory and a pipe dream.
> 
> But this Eddie pretty much obeyed conventional physics. Unlike in his last few appearances, we didn’t transport elsewhere in an instant. Our surroundings didn’t change in the blink of an eye. In fact, we stood in the doorway for some time, his mouth moving and making word-like sounds before the underwater warble pierced through my dumbfounded haze and took on meaning.
> 
> “Why did you pull all that shit?” he was asking. “Did you really think I wouldn’t come and find you?”
> 
> Helpless to do anything else, I mulled over his question. The second one in particular. I couldn’t come up with an answer at the time.
> 
> If I’m being honest with myself, I knew what I was doing, deep down. No, I didn’t make it easy for him to find me—I couldn’t have that on my conscience. But I left him breadcrumbs nonetheless. I delivered it to him, to be precise. I couldn’t steal him away, but I did the next best thing—I gave him a reason and a means to follow me.
> 
> And follow he did. Not by way of Richie’s natural genius, or Ben's clever problem solving, or Stan’s propensity for puzzles. Sure, their lasting influence on him is clear. But the fuel that powered his return to Derry? His perseverance and enduring capacity for forgiveness? Those were Eddie’s from the get-go.
> 
> Because of who he is, he forgave what I did. Despite what might’ve been glorified paternalism on my part, he set out to find me. It took some time, but he eventually gleaned from my journal entries that I got an Anthropology degree from our hometown. So, he ordered three different yearbooks from Derry Community College.
> 
> I have yet to understand how I got to be so goddamn shiny in my yearbook photo. What the hell did I do that day? I’m lucky no one was blinded by the glare bouncing off my forehead.
> 
> But I digress.
> 
> We got through the “how” of Eddie’s return relatively easily. The “why” was a good deal more stress-inducing.
> 
> His motive was not one I would’ve suspected. Nor would I have ever wished for it.
> 
> He wanted me to get out of Derry.
> 
> I asked him to repeat himself more than once, certain that I wasn’t hearing him right. “I want you to leave,” he replied each time. “I know you’re worried about whatever happens to our memories when we leave, so I’ll stay. I’ll keep watch until you're ready to come back.”
> 
> “No! I don’t want that,” I swore with utmost conviction. “Look, the truth is, you might need to come back eventually. Trust me, I won’t take on anything I can’t handle by myself. Until then, you don’t need to be here. You shouldn’t be. This place made you miserable. You made it out of here, just like you always wanted. You can’t give that up.”
> 
> “But—”
> 
> I already knew what he was going to say. “It’s different for me. You have to let me do this. I want to do this.”
> 
> “And I want to do this for you.” He raised his chin, not backing down. “And for myself. Seriously, I mean it. I deserve to remember who I am. Who I should be. I need a new start, and I can’t get that if I keep losing sight of where I came from.”
> 
> “Are you saying you want to move back here?” I asked, certain I was missing something.
> 
> “There’s nothing keeping me in New York,” he asserted. “I get it, I understand what has to happen. You have to stay in Derry because we need an anchor.”
> 
> “Yes.”
> 
> “But it doesn’t have to be you, every day, for twenty-seven years. You deserve to be more than that, as much as anyone else does.”
> 
> I couldn’t find a worthy response to that.
> 
> In my silence, Eddie kept going. “You can take a couple of months off. Go see the things you don’t normally get to see, do the things you don’t normally get to do. When you come back, the paper will still be here. Derry will probably still be under its fucked-up curse. And whatever else you’ll be coming home to… I’ll be here to face it with you.”

Eddie closes the notebook, forgoing the multitude of paragraphs Mike spends agonizing over his supposed selfishness. They’ve rehashed their respective points often enough since then. Mike was reluctant to desert his post, never mind leave Eddie stranded in it. Ultimately, Eddie took it upon himself to put in the vacation request on Mike’s behalf.

Mike was still flashing the same conflicted look weeks ago, the day he took off and temporarily gave Eddie sole custody of the town.

While Mike’s off blazing trails and hunting down childhood friends, Eddie’s done a bit of traveling on his own, but nothing to send postcards about. Every other Friday, he’s been driving to Bangor to visit his therapist. Sometimes, she heads out to Derry for home visits. She celebrates Eddie when she finds his cabinets stocked with spices and flour in lieu of excess pill bottles and pharmaceutical blister packs. When her inspections are less auspicious, she lets Eddie list out his reasons. She waits it out until he asks her to help him clear out his drawers and shelves.

Sundays through Thursdays, Eddie reports into the auto shop. He’s really come to like it, having assimilated with his coworkers through the brute force of his talents. He’s earned their respect to the point that they unironically call him the Engine Whisperer.

He also trades recipes with a few of them, since taking a keen interest in cooking and the plethora of ingredients he used to abstain from. One coworker’s kid traitorously proclaims that he prefers Eddie’s cooking over his parents’. Eddie’s only ever had dismal interaction with teenagers, but Lois Hagarty’s son, Don, proves to be an anomaly.

Outside of the auto shop, it’s nowhere near as easy to cultivate a social life. Plenty of sneering takes place behind coquettish hands. Best avoid the ‘confirmed bachelors’, they say. Be wary of the ‘Polack with a screw loose’ and the ‘thug who makes a living slandering the police’. Turns out, raging against the machine isn’t as hero-making when the machine in question is protecting a small town—even when proof of such protection is scarce.

On the other hand, Mike did earn himself at least one fan with his reporting. A man that later took on the name of Antonio reached out to him, teeming with gratitude as well as additional inquiries.

Privately, Eddie had some concerns about this Antonio fellow, as he kept shadowing Mike long after the latter connected him with Riana. But Eddie’s worries ebbed upon witnessing Antonio ward off whoever posed any threat to Mike and/or Eddie’s wellbeing. The handgun in Antonio’s backpack is unnerving, but after hearing Riana’s story, Eddie can’t condemn Antonio’s choices.

Antonio also has a far more benign weapon in Lux, his devilishly handsome German Shepherd. Eddie’s walks with Lux have been cut short as of late, as she gets tired more quickly in her pregnancy. But Eddie’s consoled by the promise that one of her pups is fated to join the Hanlon-Kaspbrak residence. He’s already got six names lined up for their future housemate, culled down from seven after Mike vetoed “Chocobo”. Mike’s still got an issue with birds, apparently—fictional ones included.

> Postcard from Las Vegas, NV
> 
> 4/20/05
> 
> I could apologize for this, but I’m not going to fall on my sword all because Richie wanted to “give you a glimpse of Chippendales’ rising stars”. (This is before you told him about us, for the record.) Bev wanted to go with a far more traditional postcard that had a drunk bride groping her fake Elvis groom. A thumb war ensued, after which allegations of foul play were put forward. You know how it goes. Regardless of the medium it’s delivered on, the message is the same. Wish you were here. ♡

Eddie carves out a chunk of his Sunday afternoon to make his calls, despite the singularly eventful day he has ahead of him. He is under strict orders not to miss the weekly calls under any circumstances.

The order is partially his own and partially Mike’s. Both agreed that regular check-ins with their friends are nonnegotiable. They are to provide weekly explanations for the newly affixed picture on their friends’ walls—the one enclosed in a frame with a handwritten demand to _CALL MIKE (207-989-1835) or EDDIE (212-561-2527) IF YOU WISH TO REMOVE!!!_ Richie campaigned to dub this arrangement 50 First Dates: Now Comes in Derry Flavor, but he and Ben are the only ones who’ve seen the movie.

Eddie dutifully calls each of them. He starts with Stan and makes his way down the list to Ben, followed by Bill, then Richie. He saves Beverly for last since she’s in the West Coast and wakes up even later than Richie does.

She hasn’t forgotten much since he last spoke to her. In fact, she brings Eddie up to speed on Mike’s final days in Nevada with no prompting needed. Later, she gets around to divulging that she’s getting antsy in the Sagebrush State. She’s considering New York as a backdrop for her fashion career, and Eddie jumps at the chance to encourage her.

Beverly, in turn, jumps at the opportunity to side-eye him. “You want me in the East Coast so I’ll be around to house-sit for you, right? Or Derry-sit, as it were? That way, you can tag along with Mike on his next big adventure.”

“That is so not the reason why I’m _supporting your ambition_ ,” Eddie says pointedly.

“You should’ve seen your man, giggling about the two of you applying for passports,” Beverly gushes. “Babe, his eyes were fucking sparkling.”

“That’s unrelated to what we’re talking about.” Eddie bids himself not to be diverted by the mental image, no matter how precious. “This is about your career plateauing in Vegas—your words, not mine. Which means you’ve only got three choices: New York, Milan, or Paris.”

“Uh-huh. Spoken like a man that’s never tried to make it in the fashion industry.”

“Okay, fine, excuse me for believing that you can make it.”

“I might be able to forgive you with enough time and soul-searching.”

“Let me earn your benevolence,” Eddie offers. “If you do end up moving to New York, Mike and I can hook you up with a couple that could help you get a lay of the land. They’ve been living there for years. One of them’s originally from Derry and the other one works at Conde Nast. She might be able to get you started with local media contacts and the like.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks, Eddie.” Her tongue-in-cheek tone softens. “Do you miss New York?”

“Sometimes.” He thinks mostly of the wealth of choices that he’d given up, a near-bottomless multitude of things to eat, see, or do. Most importantly, the diversity of perspectives that those things represent. “Not enough to want to move back, just enough to want to visit,” he answers truthfully.

“Good to know."

On his next and final call, his desire to return to New York swings dramatically in both extremes. Obligation tugs at him while self-preservation steadies him.

Over the phone, his aunt updates him on his mom’s progress, or lack thereof. The past year and a half have done nothing to winnow Sonia’s aversion to professional treatment, insisting that her son’s close proximity would be a more effective boon to her mental health. For his part, Eddie doesn’t buckle. But he assures his aunt that despite what her sister may believe, he still loves her.

“It would mean a lot to her if you could tell her that yourself,” she says.

“I’ve already said what needs to happen before I can talk to her,” Eddie reminds her. He draws a calming breath. “I’ve got to go, Auntie. My boyfriend will be home soon. I’ll call again next week.”

Silence follows. Then, “I wish you’d be a bit more discreet. I don’t hate people with your lifestyle, you know that. I’m saying this for your sake—in such a small town like yours, so far from family that can protect you…” Her tongue clucks against her teeth, managing to convey both concern and condemnation in one noise.

“Don’t worry, Auntie, I can take care of myself.”

Eddie hangs up before she can provide her opinion on that. As soon as he does, he’s suffused with excitement, eager to pivot to the remaining business of the day.

He chops up some jalapenos to smatter into a grilled cheese sandwich, ready to feed a famished traveler. He tidies up before proceeding to mess with his hair and raid his closet for the perfect outfit with which to stage a homecoming.

He’s thoughtfully gripping a hoodie that doesn’t strictly belong to him when he notices the doorknob rattle. He promptly shoves the hoodie back into the closet and rushes to the entrance.

He was aiming to beat Mike to the punch, but the door swings open before Eddie can get to it. Despite this minor failure, Eddie’s face automatically splits with an irrepressible grin. He drinks in the familiar dark brown eyes and the beard that’s thicker than anything he’s seen on that heart-meltingly beautiful face. He runs his hands over Mike’s beard before he can stop himself, needing to know how it feels on his skin.

“Missed you, too,” Mike says with undisguised fondness. “If I’m still allowed inside, I promise I’ll shave it off.”

“Or you could give me a few days with it before you do,” Eddie singsongs. He sticks his tongue out at the intrigued arch of Mike’s eyebrow.

“Does that mean you’re going to let this scruffy vagabond in?”

It’s Eddie’s turn to raise his eyebrows. He feels shades of Beverly and Richie in his smirk. “Oh, did you want to come inside, Mikey?”

Mike sputters, caught off-guard and delighted. “You’re killing me. Legally, you’re not allowed to do this to me after such a long period of deprivation,” he informs him.

“I’m not doing anything. Not where our neighbors can see.” Eddie grins at Mike’s pained groan as he opens the door wider, inviting him in. He looks around for luggage to help carry. “Where’s your stuff? Don’t tell me you had some mix-up with your bags again.”

“Left ‘em in the car. Bill insisted that I bring home an entire pantry of green and red chile sauce.” Mike waves his hand in that universal gesture of what-can-you-do. “I’ll get them later. I just had to see you first.”

Eddie’s very bones relent, reduced to honeyed goop by Mike’s unforced candor. “Alright, let me welcome you home already.” He grabs Mike’s wrist and tugs, trying to pull him forward.

“Wait.” Mike breaks loose and unceremoniously dumps the keys in his hand to scoop Eddie up, lifting him right off his feet. Staggered by the force of his emotions, Eddie barely even pretends to be annoyed. His reproachful whaps on Mike’s shoulder are eclipsed by his mirthful yelps.

He feels weightless as Mike cradles and twirls him, feels like he’s flying even when Mike carefully sets him back on his feet. Their joint whooping laughter trickles as they meet halfway to breathe each other in. They’re hopelessly tangled in each other, physically and otherwise, when Mike says, “You can welcome me home now.”

They laugh again, meeting in insistent kisses and declaring their affections like they’re playing out one of those scenes that’s meant to suggest a happy ending. Only that’s not what this is. That can come much later, because they’re nowhere near the end just yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Mother, you don't understand;  
> I made Hades run to me.  
> He saw my bones beneath  
> And offered me half his kingdom.  
> Do you really think I ate the fruit unwillingly?"  
> \- A. Davida Jane
> 
> This poem kicked my ass into writing this fic--the idea that Persephone chose to eat the seeds that "trapped" her in the underworld with Hades. So all chapter titles are (sometimes tangential) references to the myth of Hades and Persephone, and [this extremely self-indulgent collage](https://hanlonging.tumblr.com/post/628999877849989120/freedom-to-choose-our-own-chains-hanlon) has Hadestown lyrics in the middle.
> 
> Thank you for reading! <3


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